Posted on 01/01/2009 5:38:24 PM PST by Loyalist
Neither rain, sleet, snow nor strange address could keep Christmas card from its destination
Rodney Annis jokes that he’s a bit of a redneck.
He lives in Nictaux, a community three kilometres south of Middleton perhaps best known for the nearby falls and proposed wilderness area.
It is so small it isn’t listed in the census by Statistics Canada, but even Mr. Annis and his wife, Juanita, were surprised to receive a Christmas card in the mail that was addressed to "Hick in the Woods."
Not only that, but the envelope went on to give their address as: 1 tree past the squirrel’s hole, 3 runs past the deer lick, and 1 leap over the felled oak tree.
That’s it. No province. Not even a postal code. But it still landed up in their mailbox with a Florida postmark.
Ms. Annis thinks it’s a hoot, and says Canada Post deserves credit for getting it to her family.
"They always get such a bad rap. This is hilarious."
She says the local post office must have been in on the joke.
"With Canada Post, everything’s possible, the impossible sometimes, too," spokeswoman Genevieve Latour said with a laugh. She said the letter carrier at least, and likely the postmaster, played a role. She said the card probably wouldn’t have arrived at its intended destination if the same thing happened in Halifax.
In rural areas in particular, where carriers often have the same route for more than a decade, "our employees know everyone and the postmasters, too, also know their customers and if they knew the letter was going to this person, they probably recognized where it should go," she said.
Ms. Annis carried the red envelope around for a week, unopened, the anticipation building.
"It’s the thrill of not knowing."
In the end, curiosity got the better of her. When she opened it, it was just a Christmas card — but one she’ll never forget.
A home support worker, Ms. Annis showed it to her clients with the Victorian Order of Nurses, happy to give them a chuckle, too.
The card came from her cousin in Florida.
Ms. Annis thought her cousin’s return address — Frigate Bird Avenue — was fake. But no, it turns out that’s a real place.
The joke began when Ms. Annis’s sister sent out a message over Facebook asking for addresses so she could send out Christmas cards.
Mr. and Ms. Annis posted the fake address because of the family joke about their rural abode.
Her cousin, Cathy Sangalang in Florida, used this fake address, but Ms. Annis noticed recently the faint indentation of her real address on the envelope.
She thinks the proper address was on a sticker, and local postal workers peeled that off before they put it in her mailbox. Ms. Sangalang refuses to say how she actually pulled it off.
"We laughed our fool heads off," Ms. Annis said, and she wants to thank Canada Post for playing along.
Nonetheless, Ms. Latour said, the postal service still recommends people use a proper address, including the postal code, to be sure the mail does get to the intended recipient.
Kattu Barrada Nictaux.
Oooooo! That photo! Someone is going to get a lot of mail! LOL!
The mail carriers in my office could have delivered it! Sometimes I get a letter with a bad address, wrong highway, wrong last name, hasn’t lived in the area for 15 or 20 years, and somebody knows who it is, where they are now, who they were married to before, who their cousins and uncles and neighbors are, which homes they lived in, where they worked and with whom, what their parents died of, how many kids they have....
They amaze me.
I don’t know the zip but the phone number is “ BR-549”
They forgot BR549.
You beat me by 3 seconds.
Whatta bunch of Annisses.
After 3 years I bet I only knew 50% of what she knew about the families along the route. Amazing what they will tell the postman in casual conversation when they catch you at the mail box.
The only problem I had was at the Project (150 apts) with people moving in and out and no one wanting to accept reg. mail.
very cute article. I spent an hour reading various article at that newspaper. Very interesting.
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