A Gift for the Reindeer

Every year my kids make reindeer food at school.  It usually consists of a scoop of oatmeal mixed with a little glitter and is packaged in snack size ziplock bags with instructions taped to the front and decorated with ribbon or stickers.  Last year, my four year old came home with this bag of reindeer food decorated to look like a reindeer, made from a brown paper bag, brown construction paper ears, google eyes, and a red pompom nose.  If you want to make these with your kids, the instructions that go along with the reindeer "chow" follow:

REINDEER FOOD

It's the night before Christmas, and since every year, you feed Santa Claus, now feed his reindeer!

Instructions:

1. Wait until Christmas Eve.
2. Open the bag and sprinkle Reindeer Food on the lawn.
3. Hop into bed.
4. Shhh...listen for Santa.
5. Close your eyes and watch for the sugarplums to dance.

Contents:  Enough Reindeer Food for 8 tiny reindeer and Rudolph.

[I first posted Reindeer Food in 2004.]

Comments

[Paul Hooson]

A very cute story Lorie. Here's some funny Christmas animal stories.

My 11 year old miniture dachshound watched the family open gifts back when he was just a puppy and looked for a gift for himself to open, and has done it ever year since. He waits until the family is opening gifts and then has the uncanny ability to pick out a gift that is his with 100% accuracy so far, even if it is toy with no food scent to attract him. So every year we have a gift or two for the little dog to pick out and open. It's both funny and fascinating to watch.

Another strange animal skill. Cheese gifts are popular this time of year, from Hickory Farms etc. A miniture poodle I had some years back had amazing math skills and would always eat pieces of cheese in the order that I would lay them out for him. I used to try to lay out seven or eight pieces in quick order to see if I could confuse him, but could not. He had 100% success at choosing the cheese pieces in order they were laid out, no matter if many pices were in front of him. He would always eat food in mathematical order, of the first placed, first eaten, last placed, last eaten. My best guess is that he was counting the cheese or food pieces as the scent seems unlikely.

A last strange animal story. Another dachshound that I once had used to hang around my TV shop. He and a cat used to supervise my work(hang around while I worked on TVs, VCRs, Microwave ovens, radios, etc. Not that strange)But the really strange trait is that he always wanted to go to a TV auction I would attend to buy broken sets to fix, and if he thought I should have bidded on a set and didn't, he would bark out as though he was bidding on the set. I don't know if the appearance of some sets attracted him, or he thought that I forgot to bid. Not on all sets. Just particular ones for some odd reason. But it was a strange thing that everybody at the auction thought was funny.

Animals are amazing. They display far more intelligence than we realize. Maybe some here has some funny animal stories about amazing skills or talents to share. A few years ago, A CURRENT AFFAIR did a story on Barney, a talking dachshound, who would say, "I'm hungry" to his elderly woman owner. That was the best thing I've ever seen. You can go on David Letterman with a pet like that.

Merry Christmas to all, and don't forget your pets. They're your kids too!