Christmas 2010, footprints in the snow (C)

Christmas Day 2010, footprints in the snow ©

By 

Michael Casey

I got a bit of the flu again this Christmas, so I wasn’t playing in  the snow but my girls were. They came in asking me to come out quick because they’d found a footprint in the snow. I wondered what they were on about. My big daughter had asked what was the hairy animal that left foot prints. She was talking about Bigfoot or a Yeti. 

Outside she showed me what she had seen, it was a footprint wider that a mans and longer too, with 4 toe prints, or so it looked. She said there was a 2nd footprint but it had disappeared. Perhaps it was Santa’s slay mark or was it one of his reindeer’s footprint or was it the sleigh itself leaving marks behind. I retreated indoors to the warm, then I suggested that my big daughter that she took a photo.

She took a photo, literally one. I then got an old file divider and folded it in half so that I could take a few photos with the file divider being a scale reference. Its hard photographing footprints or Yeti prints in the snow, its all too white. The impression in the snow was a large imprint only half an inch deep then a smaller imprint a bit deeper followed by the 4 toe prints. I include a photo below.

Now was it the Yeti in our back garden or was it Santa and the reindeer, just leaving one footprint as they hovered in our garden. Perhaps it was the Gruffalo itself, it was all a mystery. We talked about it while we had our duck and pancakes Christmas dinner, egg fried rice with king prawns will be our supper soon as we watch Dr Who, the new one the silly one as my girls call him. I punctuated the conversation with sneezes and wiping my nose.  Terry’s Chocolate Orange was our desert. Not very traditional but a good celebration if you have a Shanghai wife and two bilingual daughters.

We’re having a break from the tv after the Gruffalo, which gives me time to write this down and tell you all about the Yeti in Birmingham. Though having thought about it, it could just be  an impression in the snow made by a cat sitting down and stretching and scratching. Though we do have foxes near where we live and we have had a fox in our garden before. But as its Christmas Day I chose to believe it was Santa’s Sleigh just touching down momentarily, and if it wasn’t that it must have been a Birmingham Yeti. A Birmingham Yeti, now that would be something, I could organise coach trips and freeze the footprint and keep it in our freezer just next to the pizzas and the sea bass, I could charge a tenner a time to see the frozen evidence. And what if it was a Gruffalo? My small daughter did have an apple fall on her head while she was making a snow angel, so did the Gruffalo knock it off while he was trying to hide amongst the trees at the bottom of our garden? Was it her Isaac Newton moment?  Was it all her imagination, or was it mine?

Judge for yourself, here’s the photo.