OT-NORAD tracks Santa...

[firechef]

This is a fun thing to do with little ones today and during the day and evening on Christmas Eve. Check out www.noradsanta.org!!! It has fun computer games and the like and even does radar tracking of Santa's flight that we all know kids like to see and hear about. They even have a count down until his take off!

Yes, I know Kambree is too little for this stuff but Daddy still plays the games and enjoys it all as much as he did when he was little and the local fire and police dispatchers and the local airport tower would make announcements on the fire and police radios about seeing Santa...one of these days I promise to grow up. Really I do!!!

[labradors]

[firechef]

Dang...hope he has AAA!

[Gourmet_Mom]

LOL! Thanks LJ, saves me from looking it up. I doubt I'll have time to play, but I'll definitely be tracking Santa.

[labradors]

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Dang...hope he has AAA!

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Arctic Antelope Association?
Arctic Antler Association?

[HomeCulinarian]

More Raindeer informaiton...

Wildlife experts ponder gender of Santa's reindeer
By BETSY BLANEY, Associated Press Writer Betsy Blaney, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 19, 4:55 am ET

LUBBOCK, Texas – There may be a perfectly good reason why Santa doesn't get lost on his annual Christmas globetrot: His flying reindeer just might be female and don't mind stopping for directions.

The gender of Rudolph and his or her sleigh-hauling friends — the subject of goofy Internet chatter every year around this time — is now being pondered by renowned wildlife experts at Texas A&M University.

"Santa's reindeers were really females, most likely," said Alice Blue-McLendon, a veterinary medicine professor specializing in deer who cites the depictions of Santa's helpers with antlers as the primary evidence. It turns out reindeer grow antlers regardless of gender, and most bulls typically shed their fuzzy protrusions before Christmas.

But Santa's sleigh helpers might also be castrated males, known as steers, said Greg Finstad, who manages the Reindeer Research Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Young steers finish shedding their antlers in February and March, just as non-expecting females do. Bulls generally lose theirs before Christmas, while expectant mothers retain their antlers until calves are birthed in the spring. This allows them to protect food resources through harsh weather and to have enough for developing fetuses, he said.

Sledders most often use steers because they maintain their body condition throughout the winter, he said. Bulls are tuckered out from rutting season when they mate with as many as a dozen females in the months leading up to December. That leaves them depleted and too lean to pull a sleigh or sled through heavy snows, Finstad said.

Many females are pregnant after rutting season, which lasts from summer and into the fall. That would mean long hours of backbreaking work for an expecting Rudolph, as well as Donner, Blitzen, Cupid, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Comet and Vixen.

"You don't hook up your pregnant females to a sled," Finstad said. "That is not good animal husbandry."

But other aaspects of the Christmas story support the all-girl sleigh team theory, Blue-McLendon said.

For example, would a boy reindeer really sport a shiny red nose that almost glows?

"Females like accessories," said Blue-McLendon, who in 2003 led the school's cloning of a white-tailed deer. "I think that fits because females like bling. We like shiny stuff."

As for the reindeer games, forget the rough antler-smashing stuff. Blue-McLendon suggests a female Rudolph would be more up for "games of wit."

And as for the name, Rudolph could certainly still work.

"Why not?" Blue-McLendon said. "I know women named Charlie."

[firechef]

First off to Labs...too cute my friend.

As for the research I would not be surprised BUT I must throw in one thing to debunk the female reindeer idea...do you really think 8 or 9 females could travel around the world without potty breaks??? I would think between "sightseeing" and "potty breaks" Santa's delivery times would be days or weeks not just one night!

[HomeCulinarian]

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...do you really think 8 or 9 females could travel around the world without potty breaks???

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In my family, it's not the women who require the frequent potty breaks!

[labradors]

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Word History: Although Saint Nick uses reins on his reindeer and reindeer are used to pull sleds in Lapland and northern Siberia, the word reindeer has nothing to do with reins. The element -deer is indeed our word deer, but the rein- part is borrowed from another language, specifically from the Scandinavian languages spoken by the chiefly Danish and Norwegian invaders and settlers of England from the 9th to the 11th century. Even though the Old Icelandic language in which much of Old Norse literature is written is not the same variety of Old Norse spoken by these settlers of England, it is close enough to give us an idea of the words that were borrowed into English. Thus we can cite the Old Icelandic word hreinn, which means "reindeer," as the source of the first part of the English word. The word reindeer is first recorded in Middle English in a work composed before 1400.

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(Source: TheFreeDictionary)

...and, speaking of potty breaks, they must be wearing Depends, or something. Otherwise, one certaintly wouldn't need NORAD to track them!

[farnfam]

Oh HA HA HA HA HA, you guys just "sleigh" me!!!!!