Tiny New Neighbors

A couple were astonished to see who had taken up residence in their mailbox

- Cathy Free

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

DON POWELL WAS pulling the usual assortment of envelopes from the mailbox outside his home in Orchard Lake Village, Michigan, when he noticed something out of the ordinary: A tiny doll couple were sitting on a love seat inside the mailbox. A small sticky note was also tucked inside.

"We've decided to live here," the message read. It was signed from Mary and Shelley.

Powell, 72, says he initially figured that somebody must have left the wooden dolls inside his mailbox back in August 2022 by mistake.

He and his wife, Nancy Powell, had a custom-designed mailbox resembling their contemporary white house installed about four years ago.

"We could understand why dolls. would want to move into such a nice mailbox, but we were still perplexed," Don says.

"I asked the neighbors whether anybody had left dolls in their mailboxes, and everyone told me no," he says. "So I thought, This must just be a joke, and whoever left them here will come back to get them. I moved them to the back of the mailbox to see what would happen."

A few days passed and nobody retrieved the dolls, he says, noting that he and his wife soon discovered that the small couple had acquired an end table, a throw rug and a pillow.

"I also have a sense of humor, so I left a note of my own, saying that what the home really needed was a refrigerator stocked with food," he says.

The fridge was never delivered. But over the next several months, additional items mysteriously showed up: a four-poster bed, a painting and a wood-burning stove, to name a few.