File this under the it can happen to anyone....
Yesterday, Monday, my hubby went out to the mailbox around 2:10 to check the mail. He found a stack of mail all belonging to our neighbor. So he took the stack and walked it nextdoor to put it in their mailbox and check to see if maybe our mail was there. The mailbox was empty.
At around the same time the girl 2 doors over is checking her mail and finds a big stack (12-15 envelopes) in her mailbox that belong to another neighbor about 3 doors down, so she walks over to put his stuff in the mailbox.
Meanwhile my husband is going over to our other neighbor on the opposite side to see if maybe our mail is there, it's empty.
I get home around 2:30 and he's telling me this. So i call the Post Office, which by the way was not listed anywhere on the phonebook, and i had to call the 1-800 number to find out the number. I tell the lady who answers the phone that apparently whoever they have delivering mail is making mistakes and did not deliver any of our mail today. She asks me where i live, i tell her the name of our street, and she says that another woman just called complaining about the same thing, and she's called the delivery person to figure out what's going on.
Get this. The mail person has not come on our street yet.
As i'm hanging up the phone the neighbor who is going through the same thing comes over and rings the bell. According to her, she and her husband came home saturday night from the football game around midnight. She figures she better let the dog out and steps out to her front porch. Her house faces the street head on, and she sees someone getting mail around this time. In her mind she says, "oh they must be getting home now and checking their mail". instead of turning and walking into their house they walk over to the next mailbox and open it. **Neighborhood regulations have all our mailboxes on the same side of the street, so in most cases there are 2 or 3 mailboxes right next to each other** So she thinks maybe they opened the wrong one by mistake. But then they open the 3rd mailbox and she's starting to freak out. At the same time the dog barks and the person turns around to look towards her house. She quick calls the dog in and goes inside. The person crosses the street towards the front house. She goes to spy from the window and sees the person hide behind some trees and after a few minutes goes back to the side of the street and looks in the following mailboxes.
She picks up the phone and calls the police. Nobody picks up and she goes to get her husband. He tells her to just go to sleep.
On monday morning she calls the police again. They come over she tells them the story, they write it down, tells her that they'll pass on the information and they'll patrol at night.
Apparently, what she and I have concluded, is that the person got scared and decided to return mail sometime late sunday night. We picked up our mail on Saturday and there was no mail on Sunday, so how we ended up with mail that wasn't ours on Monday before the mail had passed is beyond our understanding.
P.S. You know those envelopes that come with the 3 edges that need to be torn off? I found a small piece of one next to my mailbox on Monday. Trash pick up is on Tuesday, and i can't imagine it had been sitting around all this time, plus we don't generally open mail out by the mailbox.
HMMMMMMM
