I've found some strange items used for packing radios when opening the boxes- ironing board covers, chopped up real estate agent signs, old towels and other unidentifiable stuff. The thrill of unpacking a new radio is all part of the excitement. A recently purchased AWA 467 arrived this morning and gave me a bit more excitement than usual. It was very well packed with lots of bubble wrap and foam peanuts and as I was carefully lifting the bubble wrapped radio from the box of peanuts, being very careful not to spill peanuts all over the place, a bloody big cockroach jumped out and ran up my arm! Luckily when I threw the radio away it landed safely back in the box of peanuts but me jumping around the workshop firstly trying to get the cockroach off and then chasing it around trying to stomp on it would have been quite a sight. The laundry bill is going to be a bit higher this week.

I don't think I'll ever regain the old level of anticipation in opening a new radio

I had a native gecko jump out of a Marshall amplifier the moment
it was delivered to my door, and he's still there. I only ever see him at the front door,
and he's distinctly different from the asian pest geckos we have here.
So I called him Marshall!

Can't say I've had any unexpected things in any of my packages. I like to look over the foreign newspapers and I hate getting packing peanuts on the floor (and on myself -- some of them are quite prone to electrostatics).

A cockroach would be very unwelcome and just goes to show how insects hitch rides around the nation and the globe.

I was told by a fellow collector a month or so ago that he once took delivery of a radio padded with drink cans. I think that senders sometimes forget what they are trying to protect.

Recently I purchased two AWA radios and both arrived damaged and that has never happened to me before. Both items were well packed so some rough treatment en-route would have been to blame for that one.

Miraculously, I've taken delivery of radios with bugger-all padding yet they'd arrived safely - don't ask me how.

Never received one with a live animal of any sort (that I know about) though I've received a few with dried out huntsman spiders in them, and not the skinny ones, these are the big hairy ones with tusks like an elephant.

Art: I had a native gecko jump out of a Marshall amplifier

Its good that Marshall evacuated before you switched it on.

A while back I heard a huge racket at an insect electrocuter that hangs outside our living-room. A gecko had gone in there attracted by the smell of roast moth, and was still there when it switched on again.

The weird thing was that while his body was already reduced to smoking charcoal, his two eyes were glowing red like embers. Can anyone explain that without spooky references??

Maven

I once had to remove a cat from a substation at a hospital I worked at. It walked along a row of bare busbars and with two lots of 415 volts across its carcass it just smouldered and smoke billowed everywhere.

By the time I lifted it off with a broomstick it was just skin and bones with a few remnants of molten guts left. Its eyes had popped out on springs (well, that is what it looked like) and the stench went for miles.