My mailbox was mail-napped

By Chris Sweigart

Published: May 30, 2007

Someone stole my mailbox. They stole the box, the flag, the post, the whole darn thing. It’s not an attractive mailbox. It’s rotted, cracked wood with mold spores growing on the sides.
I drove to the end of my driveway, and like a missing tooth, it was absent. Uprooted. Swiped without a trace. They didn’t even leave a ransom note.
I didn’t find it trashed on the side of the road or anything, so evidently the perpetrators desperately wanted this ugly piece of wood with numbers on the side of it. I’ve got to thank them. They could have busted the poor thing up and laid the smashed wood scattered all over my driveway. Now I don’t have to clean the mess, so I’ve got that going for me.
Why would somebody steal my mailbox? Isn’t it much more fashionable for today’s academically-challenged idiots to simply vandalize something and then leave it at the victim’s yard so they could weep over their demolished property?
Perhaps my mailbox is in a better place. Perhaps it prefers to be tossed into the woods, to be used as shelter for rabbits or squirrels. Perhaps it prefers to be tossed into the bottom of a creek. Maybe it grew weary of a steady diet of junk mail. You are what you eat, you know.
Stealing or mutilating mailboxes is a federal offense. Tomorrow I’ll have a new mailbox in its place. Go ahead and try to steal it. Smile pretty—I’ve got you on camera.