REINDEER GAMES

BUTTE — By the time you read this, Santa’s reindeer should be cooling their hooves at the Alaska Reindeer Farm, resting up after their yearly night delivering toys to the children of the world.

Thursday, Santa, who looks a lot like Joshua Hardy, a member of the family who owns and operates the farm, took some time out to show the kids around the pen, lead them on some hayrides and teach them to dance the “Snow-ky Pokey.”

“We’ve got a big day coming up. We’ve got to make sure they’re bulking up,” Santa said, just a day before Christmas Eve.

He pointed to a snow-covered hillock and said the reindeer use it for King-of-the-Hill, one of their many reindeer games.

“They’re just anxious to fly,” Santa said, pointing out an area he said is a practice launch pad for his team.

In addition to practice flights, the reindeer were also practicing sleigh-pulling.

“The little elves here have been hooking them up to a little sleigh and taking them on practice runs,” with children aboard, Santa said.

They might have gotten a little too anxious. Santa said that Wednesday some of them got out and had to be brought back into the pen. He said he hopes that doesn’t happen again or, if it does, that all the reindeer come back.

“If they don’t, we just call them caribou,” he joked.

He asked the kids if they’d seen Rudolph, who he said has gotten on in years. Rudolph turned 156 this year, Santa claimed, before an elf corrected him — 136. That would still make Rudolph the farm’s oldest resident.

“We’ve got some of his grandkids here,” Santa told the kids.

Santa said he’d like to get down to the farm more, but this time of year he’s busy putting in public appearances. And then there’s the toy making, though he doesn’t tend to get his hands dirty with that job.

“I’m in upper management — upper elfin management — so I do mostly the supervision,” he said.

As Santa climbed aboard a trailer to talk to kids getting ready for a hayride, Denise Hardy, another member of the family who runs the farm, stood by, watching and wearing an elf hat. Hardy said that this is the first time the farm has opened its doors at Christmas time.

That might be surprising, until you realize that this time of year is one in which the reindeer are kind of surly.

“Our animals just get out of rut about now,” Hardy said.

So they’re not in the best of moods. And, at this point in the horn-growing cycle, a reindeer’s horns are boney rather than covered in velvet. The long and the short of it is that the farm had some safety concerns.

But apparently the Christmas spirit is alive and well even in the animal kingdom.

“They’ve been wonderful. Just as tame as can be,” Hardy said.

She said that Santa is always checking his lists of naughty and nice children. Coming to the farm, feeding the reindeer and getting them ready to fly does a lot to curry the old elf’s favor.

“Those kids who feed the reindeer definitely get on the nice list,” Hardy said with a grin.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.