Mailing Them a Bag of Poop!

It's a lot harder to send poop in the mail than you might think.

While it is not illegal to send poop by post, it is heavily regulated. Fecal matter falls under the definition of "Infectious Substances" in the DMM 601 Mailability document, which is the Bible of sending weird things by U.S. Mail. In addition to being disease-free, your poo must also be securely packaged (so the postman doesn't end up with stinkpalm).



"It's OK, it's just a Baby Ruth!"


But here's the dealbreaker: you can only mail poop for "routine testing" purposes, like to a lab. I considered telling them I was doing "routine testing" on how a colon cleansing company would react to getting a PooMail. Then I did a little more research and found there was one company that wasn't so picky when it came to poopy: FedEx.



"FedEx Stinkos is now FedEx Orifice."


The backstory (heh): I was on a quest to find the truth behind the so-called "colon cleansing scams." Both ColoThin and Ultimate Colon Cleanse let me cancel my "free trial," and neither one tried to clean out my credit card account -- just my colon.

The worst company I dealt with was Power Colon Cleanse, who tried to charge my credit card $79.95 a few days after I cancelled. Then they had the audacity to send me an e-mail complaining that the charge wouldn't go through (heh heh).

In the end, Power Colon Cleanse -- who shipped me the wrong product, and shipped it 10 days into the 15-day trial, and didn't cancel my account when promised, and tried to charge my credit card $79.95, and screwed up even that -- now wanted me to return the product, at my expense.

"Oh, I'll return your poop pills, all right," I muttered. "I'll return them ... with extra poop."



It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to prank them.


I wasn't about to use my own poop for this prank -- that's just unsanitary -- but I knew another free, unlimited source of crap. I'm not talking about the Fox News Channel, I'm talking about the DOG PARK.

I drove down to the local dog-walking path, carrying a huge plastic bag. It was a wonderland of waste. I found drifts of dung, morsels of manure, pieces of feces. There was oodles and oodles of poodle poo.



Just one of the responsible dog butts.


I also found half a dozen "poop satchels," plastic bags where the owners thoughtfully scooped up their dog droppings, then tossed the bags on the ground. This seemed a little bit like recycling your plastic bottles, then throwing them into the street. I cleaned these up, too -- brown gold.

After I had collected several pounds of doggie doo, I jogged back out to the parking lot, where a middle-aged woman looked quizzically at my pooch pouch, then back up at me. "Saint Bernard," I explained, walking away quickly.

Just before I got in the car, I looked down at my shoe. Somehow I had stepped in dog dung. For some reason, this made me really mad. They were new shoes, and I was so careful.





FedEx classifies poop as "Dangerous Goods," although it's hard to know what's dangerous about something that most of us produce once a day, and more around the holidays. I called their Dangerous Goods Hotline, asking them how I should package an "exempt animal specimen," which is the technical term for "dog dookie."

"Just double-bag it," the woman told me, "put cushioning around it, and package it in a sturdy box." I liked this woman: she knew how to cut through the crap.





I was a bit more thorough with my packaging, also using the orange BIOHAZARD sticker required by the U.S. Postal Service. Even with the double bagging, though, it smelled horrible.







At my FedEx dropoff (heh) center, I packaged the colon cleaning pills on bottom, then carefully layered the poopie pouch on top, along with some packing peanuts -- because what's poop without peanuts? I closed the lid -- the stank was overwhelming -- and took it to the FedEx guy for sealing shut, like the tomb of a decaying mummy.







"So I've labeled it 'Exempt Animal Specimen' on both the box and the bag," I said nonchalantly. "That's good enough for mailing animal feces, right?"

"Yeah," said the FedEx clerk, punching my order into the computer. Either he wasn't listening, or a lot more people are mailing doodie than I thought.

I came home and tracked my highly efficient FedEx delivery as it was shipped across the United States, awaiting the moment of truth. I paid extra for signature confirmation, so I could know exactly who received my gift, and when.