Extra charge for delivery insuranceThere are few who would call postal delivery exciting. The reasons for this attitude are difficult to pin down, but it seems there is something inherent about the meticulous sorting and distribution of various pieces of paper that fails to capture the imagination. Nevertheless, over the last century there have been those who have wanted to change that: visionaries who looked beyond the truck and mailbag and imagined a means of delivering credit card bills and erotic magazines that would defy the heavens and shake the very Earth itself. Rarely has history seen a concept so grand, and so impractical, as Rocket Mail.
The promise of rocket mail was an ultra-fast, unmanned mail transport solution that could neatly circumvent obstacles such as forests and bodies of water. The precise method proposed varied among advocates, but the basic concept was simple and universal. A rocket, anywhere from a foot in length to the size of an automobile, would be packed with mail and launched towards a target. Upon reaching its destination, it would be designed to do one of two things: either deploy a parachute and float gently to the delivery site, or, for a much better show, crash and burrow its nose into the ground, ideally with its payload intact. Assuming it could be perfected, rocket mail would be vastly superior to conventional forms of mail transport.
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The common rat is hideous thing to behold. Two species make up what we call the true rat: the black rat Rattus rattus, and the wharf rat Rattus norvegicus. On the whole of the Earth, the only places where rats do not find a home are the forbiddingly cold Arctic and Antarctic regions, some miscellaneous islands where they haven’t gained a foothold, a wildlife preserve in New Zealand, and Alberta Canada where a concerted effort of riled Canadians will massacre rodents upon a hint that a rat may have infested the province.