My father never said this specifically, but I’m sure he’d agree that, in general, when faced with a choice between live chickens and deceased white men, it’s best to go with the poultry.

That was the “choice” I had when deciding what to write about today. One option was to write about a stamp, issued on April 11, 1962 that pictured Charles Evan Hughes (who was born on April 11, 1862). The other was to feature “special handling” stamps, which were first issued on April 11, 1925. I don’t have that first 25-cent special handling stamp but I do have three subsequent ones, issued in 1928 when rates were lowered (to 10 15, and 20 cents). Collectively, these are today’s #stampoftheday.

To be sure, Hughes would have provided interesting fodder for a #stampoftheday post. He served as governor of New York State and won the office by defeating newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst-an election immortalized in the movie “Citizen Kane.” He was asked, but declined, to run for vice-president by William Howard Taft, who later tapped him to be an associate justice of the US Supreme Court. He was an unsuccessful presidential candidate (losing narrowly to Woodrow Wilson in 1916), Secretary of State and then was tapped by Herbert Hoover to be Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court (which I think makes him the only person who was twice appointed to the court). And as Chief Justice during the 1930s, he oversaw a conservative court that struck down many of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. (The battles between a conservative court and a liberal Congress and President would have made for an timely post.)

But, because of chickens (as well as alligators), Hughes can’t hold a candle to today’s other option: the introduction of “special handling” mail service. Authorized by an act passed earlier that year, special handling was different than already existing special delivery services which provided for speedier delivery of regular mail. (Under that service, when a special delivery letter arrived at a local post office, it would be immediately delivered to the recipient.) In 1997, the Post Office, which began this service in 1885, replaced it with Express Mail service.

Special handling addressed a problem brought on by the introduction of domestic parcel post service in 1913. While this was a boon to farmers and others in rural areas and fostered a boom in mail-order businesses, such as Sears and Montgomery Ward, there was a problem. Parcel post shipments were a low priority, which meant parcels were held until there was room for them in outgoing vehicles. That’s wasn’t a huge problem for many things, but it was a major problem for perishable items, particularly live animals. As a result, one history of the service noted, “senders would cajole the postal officials into finding space to send out their perishable items. The officials would sometimes relent, in part, because they did not want to deal with boxes of rotting whatever.”

To solve the problem (and make money for a service that was already being offered, at least informally and intermittently), special handling was authorized in a postal act passed in 1925. For a small fee, the post office would treat parcel post items like first-class mail. Moreover, postal regulations explicitly noted that “this special handling charge [would apply] to all parcels containing day-old chicks or baby alligators, which, because of their character must be given special attention in handling, transportation, and delivery.”

While the Post Office stopped using the stamps in 1959, special handling still exists and, in fact, is required for parcels that contain baby chicks or honeybees. It also is available for items that are fragile, for hazardous materials, for live animals, for perishables, and for cremated remains.

This service can be quite useful, as my daughter Anna, learned a few years ago. Anna is a garden educator who, among other things, oversees a school garden in San Francisco. Bubbles, one of the chickens in her garden, had died and Anna wanted to know why. It turns the UC Davis veterinary school does chicken autopsies. But they had to have the chicken quickly.

So, after carefully packing the chicken, Anna took it to the post office where she was going to send it using the special handling service (or something similar, like Express Mail). The clerk began asking her the list of questions about what she was mailing.

Was Anna sending “live poultry” she wanted to know? Anna thought for a minute and then said that while she wasn’t sending live poultry she was sending a deceased chicken. The woman began to ask questions but stopped when Anna assured her that it would take too long to explain.

The woman allowed it—perhaps because the dead chicken qualified as something “perishable.” The chicken got there in time and the autopsy showed that the chicken not only suffered from Marek’s Disease (a common ailment in small flocks) but also had suffered from heart failure, probably brought on by eating things chickens shouldn’t eat – almost certainly treats slipped to her by the kids (who loved the chickens).

Anna used this as a teaching moment. She put up an “RIP Bubbles” poster in the school explaining what chickens should, and should not, eat. The student responded to this by a younger version of “Law and Order-SVU (Special Veterinary Unit) asking, Anna says, “what did she eat and who fed it to her?”

With the pandemic, the chickens are gone, sent to farm in Marin County. Anna is now introducing baby quails at the garden at the school which is about to reopen to at least some in-person learning. But she’s worried that there might still be lingering remnants of Marek’s disease in the coop. UC Davis can test for that too, if you send them a sample of the bird’s excrement. Anna’s thinking about doing that. If she does, presumably she’ll again have to send the package via special handling, which may require yet another unique conversation with someone in the post office.

So while Charles Evan Hughes had an illustrious career, he can’t hold a candle to strange sage of special handling.

Stay safe, be well, be careful mailing baby chicks or dead chickens, fight for justice and work for peace.