Toronto man shocked by package delivered to his mailbox

A container of cockroaches Christopher Lambe found in his mailbox in Toronto.

A Toronto man says that he discovered “nightmare fuel” – a container full of live cockroaches in his mailbox – after arriving home from a day of appointments with his wife and newborn daughter last week.

Christopher Lambe says that he reached for the stack of flyers and bills overflowing in the mailbox after a month spent mostly homebound since his daughter Dottie was born. Then, he saw a little box.

“I guess it’s a gift from our past selves,” he said, noting that he initially thought it may have been a package he forgot he had ordered.

“I keep on pulling it out and I’m seeing brown and I’m like, ‘Okay! It’s cookies.’ I literally got super excited. Some fresh baked cookies with milk would be amazing right now.”

Given that neighbours had been bringing over baked goods in recent weeks since Dottie was born, this made sense to him, he said. But that excitement was extinguished when Lambe saw the cookies were moving.

It was his wife who realized the cookies were cockroaches – about a dozen of them.

“They were alive and they were the size of my palm,” he said.

Despite his wife’s protest, Lambe said that he brought the critters inside and snapped a picture to post in a couple of Toronto community groups on social media. The post soon went viral with more than 300 comments and over 500 likes.

Within a few hours, Lambe got a knock on the door from an apologetic and embarrassed neighbour who had ordered the cockroaches for their tarantulas and reptiles – a high protein snack that had been dropped off to the wrong house.

“It made for a great story,” Lambe laughed. “It’s kind of the first odd story that involves Dottie, our newborn. I can't wait to share it with her.”