A birthday disaster was narrowly averted at the Brewer residence.
Let me explain.
Nancy’s birthday is upcoming, and I have been visiting Mr. Amazon’s fine website on multiple occasions to secure presents she hopefully will use and enjoy. For the last week or so, the gifts have been arriving regularly on the front porch.
When Amazon ships a present – already in a sturdy box – I usually don’t open it and wrap it as is. I had been expecting a garment as one of the presents and saw what appeared to be its box as it arrived. So, I stashed it in my closet.
At the same time, I had ordered 4,000 meal worms from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm for my bluebirds, also through Amazon. I usually order from Fluker Farms, but their website was being uncooperative on the day I tried, so I switched to the other company. I know and recognize the worm boxes from Fluker. They are heavy duty have wire vents on the side, and I had not seen that type of box show up.
Amazon had said they would deliver the worms on a Tuesday, but the box I expected didn’t come. They also did not send a picture of the box on my porch as it arrived.
I let them know it was missing. Wait a few days, said Mr. Amazon – it’ll show.
But it didn’t. Now several days later, I asked for a refund and would try again to order from the other company. The next day, the original shipper sent a picture of a package they delivered and said, “Is this your porch?”
It was and then I realized that the box I had stashed in the closet was not a garment after all, but likely a container of 4,000 dead worms that my wife would have opened with great anticipation in another week.
“Oh, it’s dead, stinking meal worms. How thoughtful,” she would have said, and I would have been in deep you-know-what.
I raced to the closet to check the box, and indeed it was the box of the missing the worms, but miraculously they were all still alive, but they wouldn’t have been in another week. I had retrieved them from the porch in time and put them in an air-conditioned environment and though they much prefer refrigeration, they had survived.
I suppose the lesson I should glean from this incident is to always immediately open all the boxes from Amazon.
But I am, after all, a slow learner.
