A story that sounds like “The 12 Days of Christmas” gone horribly wrong is wrapping up with a happy ending (unless you happen to be a recently deceased canary): after delivering a smashed box filled with a half-dozen dead birds to a woman in Alabama, the U.S. Postal Service has successfully replaced the deceased avians with seven live canaries.

The woman had ordered the canaries as a birthday present to herself, AL.com reported earlier this month, and was upset when the package of dead birds arrived at her salon.

“When my postmaster got there he told me, ‘Well, your birds arrived, but they’re not alive,'” she told AL.com. “This happened right in front of my clients. I was handed this box with tire tracks on it and bird carnage hanging out.”

At the time, the USPS said it planned to reimburse her the money for the bird and shipping, and promised to apologize. The agency has now made good on that pledge, the Associated Press reports, paying for seven new canaries plus the postage needed to send them to the woman. They arrived safely on Thursday (photo above is just a canary, not one of the replacement birds).

The woman says she’s pleased to finally have the calming songs of live birds greeting her ears.

“It’s not going to replace the other birds, but they did the next best thing and I’m proud of them,” she told the AP. “It’s just beautiful, soft, harmonizing, orchestrated music.”

Despite the horror of receiving mangled birds, the woman says she’d use the USPS again. Whether or not she’ll ship live canaries ever again is unclear.

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