UPS Ruined My Christmas Eve Dinner
“The rabbit died,” wrote my mom’s husband. So much for that last hope, I thought. Three days of miscommunication and stress, and one rabbit’s life, all for naught.
A month ago, my mom and I brainstormed ideas for Christmas Eve dinner. I suggested rabbit — the soon-to-arrive issue of The Art of Eating has my article on the subject — and my mom lit up. It was something new, and it was a dish that her husband ate as a child: He loves rabbit. In fact, his memories of eating it prompted me to pitch my article.
I told my mom that I would hunt down Devil’s Gulch rabbit. Mark Pasternak breeds the bunnies you find on just about every Bay Area menu, and he raises them with care and atttention. But he also seems to turn the supply spigot on and off at whim. Taylor, at Fatted Calf, couldn’t get them. Bi-Rite Market, the upscale grocer in San Francisco, couldn’t get them. Even Berkeley’s Cafe Rouge, which uses a different, high-quality source, couldn’t get me rabbit for Christmas. Industrially-raised rabbits are available, but, as the meat buyer at Bi-Rite said, “Once you’ve had Mark’s, there’s no substitute.”
We decided to call D’Artagnan, the famous specialty-meat provider. The rabbit wouldn’t be local, but it would be delicious.
The calamity began on Friday, when my mom looked up the tracking number. Because of volume overflow, UPS had delayed the package. Don’t ask me why an item that requires refrigeration was held back, but that was the source of every subsequent problem. I called D’Artagnan and asked them to re-route the box to my mom’s loft because no one would be at the original shipping address on Saturday. The rabbit arrived in Oakland on Friday afternoon but sat at the warehouse until the next day, when UPS tried to deliver it to the old address. Had it arrived at my mom’s on Saturday, it might have been okay. But UPS held it through the weekend, and delivered it on Monday, three full days after it was supposed to arrive. The ice packs had thawed, and the rabbit’s internal temperature was 54°: well above the safety limit. My mom’s husband, who received the box, sent out the email we had all feared. I called D’Artagnan, and they resignedly reversed the charges: UPS messed up many of their orders this holiday season.
Of course, my mom put together a delicious dinner, but there was still a melancholy moment when her husband described the bunny as, “the prettiest rabbit I’ve ever seen.”
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