I was sitting in the doctor’s office today reading a holiday edition of Real Simple Magazine. It had an article that said you cannot under any circumstance ship livestock through UPS, but you can ship a fully decorated Christmas tree. And the wait was long, so I had plenty of time to wonder why I have only used UPS for shipping boring items like books? So I decided to look up the specifics of UPS animal shipping policy.
UPS Animal Policy
| Accepted Live Animals
This is a comprehensive list of live animals accepted for transportation. Shippers are prohibited from shipping any animal not listed here, and all other live animals will not be accepted for transportation. The following live animals are accepted for transportation unless poisonous, venomous, and/or a Threatened or Endangered Species.
Prohibited Live Animals Live Animals that are prohibited from being shipped and are not accepted for transportation include, but are not limited to:
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You may ship mollusks, salamanders, and ALL types of worms, but you may not ship venomous creatures, obnoxious insects, crocodiles, and mammals. Who has to decides this? If I wrote a letter, would they consider shipping crocodiles? And do they ever add anything to the list? Like what if someone mixed a labrodoodle and a salamander? Not saying that I have any idea how that would be possible, but then would it be shippable or on the no list?
The Post Office has even more exciting animal shipping rules
“The Postal Service will continue to accept live animals that do not require delivery within a 72-hour period, such as earthworms, lizards, snails, crickets, grasshoppers, and bees, which can move on ground transportation. Also, the Postal Service will continue to accept live animals for which the postage is $3.50 or less for shipment using air transportation.
The Postal Service will provide limited service for live animals for which the postage is more than $3.50 and that require air transportation, such as day-old poultry, adult poultry and queen honeybees. This service will be available to and from the airports listed below.”
For every birthday, wedding, baby shower, expect a box of queen honey bees from me. They say limited services but I hear possiblities.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s an interesting policy. I could mail you a full sized Marlin, which has zero chance of surviving even a half hour out of water. However, I could not mail you a pigeon.
Interesting. When my dad was a kid he ordered not one, but two live alligators from a mail order catalog. I’m assuming they came through the mail. How sad that times change and one can no longer ship any kind of crocodile.
That is sad. Perhaps I need to start a letter writing campaign to UPS. If I get PETA involved that alligator or Marlin could ride first class
Okay I undestand it may seem odd to mail some things but I have totally gotten ladybugs, caterpillars, and tadpoles through the mail. Welcome to the exciting world of teaching. The worst was the tadpoles nd they sloshed around in the box and it freaked me out.
That is so cool! I want someone to mail me a box of ladybugs….hint hint Sandra