NOISOME GIFT

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30133, 17 May 1963, Page 10

NOISOME GIFT

Dead Opossum For Police

The Chief Superintendent of Police in Christchurch

(Mr M. Brown) yesterday confirmed that he had been .sent a dead opossum through the parcel poet. The opossum had been dead a long time.

A dead rat. also very high, has been sent to toe Christchurch City Council traffic department.

The police know that the sender of the rat and the ) possum was a young woman, who frequently, in public, has expressed her dislike for all policemen and traffic officers.

“We are taking no action against this person. She has been in trouble for breaking the law on several occasions She is more to be pitied than anything else.’’ a police spokesman said. “She is possibly in need of help from a psychiatrist.’’ The opossum was wrapped up in a shoe box. It cost half-a-crown for postage. It was addressed to the Chief Superintendent. Christchurch Central Police Station. It was opened in the district office by SeniorSergeant L. Grimwood. “I had my suspicions about the parcel, and opened it very gingerly. The first thing that came out of the lid was some hundreds and thousands

—to sweeten the insult perhaps. It did not stop the stink when the lid was lifted a little. Inside. I saw the

■possum’s claw,” SeniorSergeant Grimwood said. He said he put the box and contents in sheets of newspaper, took them from the office and got rid of them. “I did not see. or smell, the opossum. I was told about it,” said Mr Brown. ”We decided not to mention it at all. so as not to give the sender even the satisfaction of knowing it had been delivered.”

However, when the young woman was being questioned by detectives in connexion with another matter she could not restrain her curiosity and asked if the police had received a dead opossum through • the post and the traffic department a dead rat.