My wife received a package in the mail today. In fact, the postman even showed up earlier than usual. “Huzzah!,” you say. Unfortunately, the package was mailed on February 9, 2007. That’s 48 days ago. “Boo!,” you say. Even more unfortunately, the package was sent by her grandmother. “Poor show!,” you say. Most unfortunately, my wife’s grandmother lives approximately 11 driving miles from us, not only in the same state, but in the same city. A different borough, though — that must be the problem.

I did some math. I like math. It turns out that the package averaged less than 0.25 miles/day on it’s journey here. That’s less than 0.01mph. 1/100th of a mile per hour! For comparison, I looked up the top speeds of some of our fine friends from the animal kingdom:

Peregrine Falcon: 200mph
Cheetah: 70mph
Greyhound: 40mph
Grizzly Bear: 30mph
Olympic sprinter: 28mph
Elephant: 25mph
Squirrel: 12mph (future USPS recruits here in NYC?)
Giant Tortoise: 0.17mph
Giant Sloth: 0.15mph (15x faster than the package!)

It turns out that if the post office had strapped the package to the back of a garden snail and pointed him toward Brooklyn, it would have gotten here in about 16 days — three times faster than the mailtruck-equipped postal service! Snail mail, indeed. We had given up hope of even receiving the package (a pair of jeans, if anyone’s curious), so I guess we should count our blessings.

On another note, I’ve decided to start illustrating my posts.