An alligator ate my Amazon package

It is not April Fool's Day. But perhaps there are folks at Amazon.com for whom, given that they work so hard, every day is April 1.

Or perhaps not.

The story that I wish to relate, as told by Will Collier, one of the world's more original bloggers, is that he ordered a computer part via Amazon. It did not arrive.

Now Amazon tends to be one of the finer online retailers when it comes to customer service, so Collier thought that one quick call to a customer service rep would surely locate his errant part.

Might I use Collier's words from his blog in order to offer a little local flavor? He says he "got a female rep with not-so-good English. After quite a thrash getting my information, she allegedly called the shipper (long time on hold for me) and came back to say they had told her my package would not be delivered..."

You can feel the tension of the three dots I have left within the quote. They are the same three dots Collier himself left, as the words that followed them were: "because it had been eaten by an alligator."

He said he made her repeat that five times before she reportedly conceded, perhaps just to quash his persistence, "it may have been a different animal."

You might be taken aback to a previous life as a butterfly to discover that Collier then called the shipper, who denied knowledge of this fine tale. He also called Amazon again. This time, he was told the package was on its way, sans any teeth marks.

However, a follow-up post Tuesday, in which Collier again insists this tale is utterly genuine, noted that the actual package--a motherboard--never did arrive. Indeed, Amazon was kind enough to send him a replacement.

I know there will be coughers and scoffers who will declare all of this a substance-induced fantasy. I am not so sure. I have been to Florida. I have seen just how ruthless and indiscriminate some of its inhabitants can be. The alligators can be pretty tough, too.

So I am of the entirely unsubstantiated opinion that a gator was indeed responsible. I am also of the entirely unsubstantiated opinion that this gator was the adopted pet of one of the Amazon shippers.

His owner, the Amazon shipper, despairing that he would ever find good nourishment for his gator, was suddenly inspired by the Amazon feature "Additional Items to Explore." Having first tried a couple of PCs, a tablet, a couple of video games, some second-hand Norman Mailers, a Bill Haley "See You Later Alligator" CD, and even a Kindle, he gave his gator one sniff of the motherboard package and discovered he had hit the mother lode.

I believe they call it natural selection, right? That's what Amazon is all about.