10. They navigate roads containing everything from riding lawn mowers and renegade 4-wheelers to impenetrable cattle drives and impassable combines.

9. They are mailbox connoisseurs — ample room, water-tight, correct height, easy-open and no critters inside.

8. They’re exposed to high fashion, like the guy who comes to the mailbox wearing pajama bottoms, mud boots and a felt that looks as if it spent some time in a badger hole.

7. They can confirm that, yeah, you do get more flat tires after the road grader has rearranged the gravel.

6. And, come to think of it, they know every unlocked shed containing a working air compressor along the way.

5. They’ve seen it all — a deer chasing a goat with a 5-gallon bucket stuck on its head? Big yawn.

4. If they read your mail, they’d not only be bored to death, they wouldn’t have time to deliver it.

3. They don’t mind a few weeds around the mailbox, but, c’mon man — poison ivy?

2. You can set your watch by delivery — as long as you allow for Christmas packages, end-of-the-month bills and having a substitute carrier from the next county.

1. They’d take a lazy old pooch who’s a sucker for a dog biscuit over an over-achieving heeler any day.