Man finds a mysterious cute doll couple in his mailbox along with an adorable note

It's not uncommon for people to find strange or unexpected items in their mailboxes from time to time. Don Powell also found something unexpected in his mailbox last August along with his bills and a mix of pizza coupons. He came across a tiny doll couple sitting on a mail seat. It came with a note, "We've decided to live here. Mary and Shelly." Powell first thought that the dolls were left inside the box by mistake. He and his wife, Nancy Powell, have a custom-made mailbox that they installed four years ago which looks like the white house, according to USA Today.

“We could understand why dolls would want to move into such a nice mailbox, but we were still perplexed,” Powell said. He thinks that the dolls are "extremely unattractive," per The Washington Post. He thought of throwing the dolls and the sofa into a trash can but then had second thoughts. He went on to ask his neighbors if they had received dolls in their mailboxes and everyone told him no. Powell came to the conclusion that it might be a joke and the person who did it might come to collect it back. 

No one came to take the dolls but soon he and his wife began to find additional things for the dolls like 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 said. The fridge never arrived but in the next couple of months, they found more things for the dolls like a bed, a painting and a wood-burning stove. 

It has been eight months since the dolls first came and they are still living in the mailbox. So he took to "Nextdoor," a hyperlocal social networking site for neighborhoods, hoping someone would admit that they put Mary and Shelley in the mailbox. As no one came forward, he joked that he'd contact the police and asked them to do extra rounds of his mailbox. Around Halloween, the dolls were replaced by two skeleton structures and during Christmas, Mary and Shelly were back with miniature-sized gifts for their home. 

Powell started to document everything, “The response (on Nextdoor) was just incredible People were saying, ‘This is so much fun to read, I was ready to get off of Nextdoor, but this makes me want to stay.’” Soon, they received another mystery note which said that Mary and Shelly earlier lived in a two-story Dutch-style doll house but decided to move into their mailbox because it was more accommodating for their cousin Shirley.

“Then, after (February) ice storm, I did a post that said the family was locked in the mailbox and couldn’t get out,” Powell said. “Somebody asked if they lost power, I said ‘No, they don’t have power to begin with, but they do have a wood burning stove and were working from home.’” Unlike Powell, his wife Nancy has been enjoying the saga and doesn't get worked up like her husband. “It's very cute," she said. "I get a laugh out of it. It’s a good positive thing, especially during these crazy times." However, now Powell has started to enjoy the mystery and looks forward to finding new things in the mailbox. “I am thinking, given the reaction (on Nextdoor), of writing a children’s book,” he said. “I think it creates a novel story.”