Robert Neville, mail carrier on Route 3, started out from the post office one day last week with a box of young chicks addressed to a farmer. It rested on the back seat of the Ford. Mr. Neville kept hearing a noise that didn’t seem to belong to chickens, but since these were strangers from Kentucky or Missouri, he concluded that maybe fowls out there had voices different from those of North Carolina fowls.
He unloaded the box at its destination and proceeded on his way. Then he heard the noise again. It was a squeaky falsetto and had a sound something like the word “Mama.”
“Must be a cat,” he thought. He stopped his car, and looked back over the seat. No cat there. He went on, and again came the sound. This time he stopped the car, descended to the ground, and looked underneath, thinking perhaps an animal was stealing a ride in the manner of a tramp under a freight car.
Again, nothing found. Mr. Neville clambered into the car and went his way. The crying sound was repeated. The mystery of it began to make him feel shivery even in the broad daylight. Pretty soon he arrived at a farmhouse where he had to deliver a box to a young girl. She opened it in his presence and took out a mechanical doll. She squeezed the doll and it wailed “Mama” loudly. The puzzle was solved. The contents of the mail pouch, churned by the movement of the Ford, had crushed the doll-box, and this pitiful cry for a lost parent was what Mr. Neville had heard.
From the front page of The Chapel Hill Weekly, May 15, 1924
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