The Snek’s In The Mail - Man Repeatedly Sent Live Rattlesnakes
Mail generally isn’t supposed to consist of live animals, but a man hissed his pants after a living rattlesnake was mailed to him. Which would have been just an odd news story if it didn’t happen again.
By Bram Teitelman · May 29, 2024
What could be worse than regular mail? If it’s not bills (spoiler alert: it’s bills), it’s junk mail for political candidates, who can be real snakes. Speaking of real snakes, that’s exactly what one man received in the mail: a living danger noodle, which was later determined to have the more technical description of a Northern Pacific Rattlesnake. Elijah Bowles, a 60-year-old truck driver, tells the Los Angeles Times that he picked up a package at the Twentynine Palms post office.
The package was marked “fragile,” but unfortunately, it wasn’t marked “live deadly animal that could potentially kill you with venom,” so he asked his friend to open the package, which also included cotton balls to muffle the rattle, while driving back in his truck. “When she opened the box, she threw it at me almost,” he told the outlet. “And she says, ‘There’s a snake in there.’” He pulled over, since he’d likely seen Snakes on a Plane and knew that a truck was even smaller, and then used a stick to open the box and called animal control.
This certainly seems like a “Florida Man” story so far even though it happened in California, doesn’t it? Well, wait, the story’s not over yet! The return address had a Palm Coast, Florida address, but tracking information shows that it was actually mailed in Hayward, California. But guess where Bowles actually lives? If you said “Florida,” you’re the lucky winner of a second rattlesnake. And that’s exactly what was sent to his home address as well - an identical package. This one, however, wound up at a police station, as he warned his family not to open it.
Two nope ropes in one week is enough for Bowles to think that someone’s got a vendetta against him. “I’m trying to figure out, do I have any enemies?” he told the Times. “I’m not a gangster, I’m a truck driver.” And while this could be foul play, we’ve come up with a few scenarios that might explain his reptile dysfunction:
He mistakenly joined the Snake of the Month Club
He ran over a rattlesnake on a highway, and its family is hell bent on revenge
The packages actually came from the United Snakes Postal Service
His favorite Harry Potter house was Slitherin’
Alexa thought he ordered “protein snakes” from Amazon
Either way, an investigation is taking place to find the culprit, since believe it or not, it’s illegal to mail snakes (although bees and even scorpions are cool). Possibly the scariest thing about this whole story is that the Times cites a snake wrangler who said snakes can survive for up to six months without food or water, which is about how long the mail takes sometimes.