“Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?”
This immortal line from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” always finds a way to be relevant. Just the other week, a bridesmaid had to remove a fairly large snake from her sister’s wedding party. And last year, homeowners found an infestation of snakes in their new house. Now we’ve got something on our hands that one-ups both of those, a possible attempted murder… by snake in the mail!
Earlier this month, 60-year-old truck driver Elijah Bowles picked up a package at the post office in Twentynine Palms, California. It was addressed to him, and marked “fragile.” Bowles was traveling in his vehicle with a friend, and asked her to open the box for him while he was driving. She did, and quickly discovered there was a LIVE rattlesnake inside. Bowles pulled over, tossed the box out of the car and proceeded to open up the box at a distance using a stick. Sure enough, a rattlesnake was inside.
Bowles believes this may have been a deliberate attempt to try and kill him. Potentially supporting this hypothesis is that the box was filled with cotton balls, one assumes to muffle and stifle the sound of the rattlesnake rattling. Also in furtherance of the murder theory is that a virtually identical package was sent to his home in Florida where his family residing there obtained it. He advised, for obvious reasons, not to open the box and take it to the police.
There is an investigation in process with the US Postal Inspector now in charge. It’s not every day that venomous animals are sent through the mail after all. Meanwhile, Bowles was quoted as saying, “I’m trying to figure out, do I have any enemies?” Which is quite a reasonable question to ask yourself after you’re sent a rattlesnake anonymously. Steve Irwin wasn’t even sent snakes in the mail like that and he presumably wouldn’t have needed to have animal control attend to the situation either.
This would be a very interesting case to get further developments on. In the meantime, let’s hope the Postal Inspector and the Postmaster General can get these motherf***ing snakes out of the motherf***ing postal system!
