WHAT NOT TO SEND TO IRAQ

It is that wonderful time of year again, when folks all over the US want to send some special foods and goodies to let our soldiers know they are remembered and appreciated back home. In addition to the many thousands of volunteers and the wonderful things they send, once in a while we hear about some care packages that, well..... you decide. Keep in mind...these are all true stories.

Thanksgiving Dinner in a Bag
Last Thanksgiving, we were told about a lovely and hardworking person who cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner for her adopted unit. Then she spent three days sealing it up using one of those "seal-a-meal" gadgets and packed it all up and mailed it to Iraq.

She posted step-by-step directions on our forum about how to do it, and confidently explained that "germs can't grow without air", so it was perfectly safe.

My God, I thought, we just committed biological war-fare against the United States Army. The FBI must be coming over right now! In a panic, I posted urgent messages telling people not to do this, and begged anyone who knew where it was sent to email the unit and tell them not to eat the stuff.

I sweated for days, until cooler heads pointed out that:
1. This was a medical unit, so they had probably passed high-school biology and knew all about anerobic bacteria.
2. They had the training to watch for suspicious food items.
3. Nobody in his right mind would eat what must have been disgusting bags of slime after spending 5 days in transit through the US postal service.


CHICKEN IN A BOX
OK, I just heard about this one from one of my fellow managers at SA, and she heard it direct from one of her adopted medics at CSC Scania :

On a sidenote, someone sent a soldier (our medical Captain -- 'Doc') a chicken in the mail. A live chicken. It was still living when we got it here. It was pecking about it's box quite furiously. I do not know how it survived, or why no one did anything to prevent the chicken from making it all the way here. We released it into the countryside; it will probably not make it. Very, very odd.Take it easy; enjoy the rest of the Thanksgiving weekend!-David K

Personally, I think it might be from the turkey dinner person last year. She probably figured, "OK, they don't want me to send a cooked bird, I'll send a fresh one and they can damn well cook it themselves".


"MAGGOTS FOR SOLDIERS" or

"WHEN GOOD COOKIES GO BAD" or

"ALWAYS CHECK THE EXPIRATION DATE ON DONATED FOOD ITEMS"

another true story
I don't know. I don't want to know.

UPDATE: OK, some one insisted on telling the the story, so now I know. Here it is:

(from an Army Major now returned safely home .... So now I have to tell you a funny story. The #1 box you sent had some XXX Brand Oatmeal Raisin Cookies in it. So this morning I head up for a meeting and figure it was going to be a long one so I better take some munchies. So I grab one of the Oatmeal Raisin cookies packs. I get up to my meeting and my boss sees the cookies and is like “Oatmeal Raisin, my favorite” I open up the pack and he grabs a couple and I grab a couple and my roommate grabs one and we all munch away (can you see where this is going). I put the pack down and the meeting starts, about 10 minutes into the meeting I notice a tiny worm crawling on my hand so I flick it off then I glance a the cookies and notice a couple more crawling in the pack!! So needless to say I did not eat anymore, but looked at the cookies and sure enough between each cookie there was a bunch of little maggot looking worm things. So I left the meeting with cookies in tow meaning to throw them away and when I got to my next stop I was talking to the guys doing some work for me and 1 of them reached for the cookies and right as he was raising to take a bite I told him he might not want to and he did not believe me until I showed him the worms. It was pretty funny looking back on it especially when I told my boss! Don’t worry about it or anything, no one got sick and we all actually chuckled about it. So add that to your speaking tour stories.

-Rog