More Reindeer Fall Sick at the North Pole 1I ran into a nervous looking Elf Victor this morning on my way into the office. I could tell something wasn’t right so I flagged him down to see what was going on.

“We’ve had 130 more reindeer come down sick overnight.” Elf Victor told me. “They all have the same symptoms that Dasher has and that isn’t good news because we still haven’t figured out what is wrong with him. We have been checking him for every known virus that is out there. We have checked everything he has come in contact with to see if we can find anything. We have all of them in isolation and were hoping that it won’t spread but we don’t know if that will work. If this keeps spreading we may not have enough reindeer on Christmas eve.”

I asked Victor what would happen if Dasher couldn’t fly on Christmas Eve.

“We train for this scenario every year. Santa has a B team of reindeer that help out on Christmas Eve so the A-team can take a break. We would simply move one of them up to take Blitzen’s place. They have all flown together and trained for this so it shouldn’t affect anything on Christmas Eve. Then we also have a backup squad for the B team that we could use if they start to come down sick.”

“The main thing this could affect is all of the supply sleighs that deliver gifts to Santa and the reconnaissance sleighs that I send up for Elf Billy. If I don’t have enough healthy reindeer to get all the supply sleighs up it Santa may not finish on time.”

I wanted to talk to Elf Dr. Spock but he’s taken up residence at Santa’s Stables and won’t leave. I tried to contact Santa but he’s flying an express slegh back to the North Pole some time today to check on the reindeer, too. We will keep you posted.

— Elf Ernest