So far we’ve received lots of death prediction requests. Any time a large volume of mail comes in, there’s a decent chance that something is going to arrive damaged.

In this case, the damage was cause by some sort of shenanigans going on at the post office. I don’t know what they get up to there, but apparently on very rare occasions it destroys pieces of mail. The post office assured us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, they care about our mail and do all they can to ensure it will arrive safely. They’d put this envelope in a little plastic bag that said so!

This basically says “We handle a lot of mail, so even though we take tons of precautions, sometimes we damage things… Hope you’re not super upset with us, even though you totally have a right to be.”

Okay. So sometimes these things happen. At least the contents of the envelope were pretty much intact.

But… but what’s this?!

Apparently that little red bow is some sort of a traveller’s charm. All the letters that arrived completely unmolested were just ordinary letters, but the one letter that includes some sort of precaution against harm arrived with a hole torn out of the corner. I guess we debunked your superstition! Sorry about that. Didn’t do it on purpose.

And here’s the back of that note, for those of you who are interested:

This case provides a fascinating contradiction. I guess now we know that little red bows cannot be trusted. At least the dinosaurs were not harmed on their journey, so maybe the bow actually worked and if it hadn’t been there they would’ve been shattered. The nifty little creatures arrived just fine, despite whatever terrifying adventure they experienced on the way.

Want to send us something and get your death prediction in return? Statistically, it’s unlikely anything bad will happen to your letter, since we’ve already had a damaged one and that fulfills our quota! (Fun fact: Statistics do not work this way.)