Oh My 'Rein-Deer!'

It's Christmas Eve and tonight the reindeer will be flying around the world and all the little kiddies will hopefully be snug in their beds.
This blog is not about reindeer, really. It's about a cousin of the reindeer called the antelope. (We see alot more of them around here than we do those north fliers who live with Santa.)

This is a true story-
Recently on a sunny winter afternoon, I was driving with my two youngest children and at a stop sign my daughter looked out the side window and exclaimed, “Look! What are those things.”
She’s 6 so that’s not an unusual question from her. I glanced over and saw 40 antelope standing in a field just to the east of the four way stop.
I happened to be talking on my cell phone, also not unusual, and I explained to my friend and my children that we were seeing a huge group of antelope beside the road.
The graceful creatures then decided to cross the road en masse in a brilliant display of herd mentality. The humans yielded right of way and no antelope were injured.
“How fun! They look like reindeer,” I told my friend with Christmas in mind.
After the animals had all passed we drove on to our destination and I went on with my busy day.

That night at dinner, my daughter was complaining about not having any juice and I was answering another question from my oldest son when she waved her hand and said, “What are those things called, mom? You know is it cantaloupe?”
Thinking she was asking for fruit, I replied that yes indeed we could get some cantaloupe and she ran off.
A few seconds later I walked into my bedroom to find her explaining to my husband that we had seen a ‘flock of cantaloupe’ on the road.

“Were they rolling down the street,” he asked, adequately perplexed and turned to me for explanation. I was laughing too hard to answer right away.
“You mean a herd of antelope, dear,” I clarified.
After some persuasion and a little explaining of the difference between fruits and grazing animals and an interruption by my 4 year old claiming ‘no they’re reindeer, mommy said so’, we all had a little chuckle and went about our evening.

Then Grandma called.
The story was retold by my daughter over the phone and grandma responded appropriately with loads of giggles.
Grandma then pointed out that it was an easy mistake to make because cantaloupe and antelope rhyme.

To which my adorable little scholar said very seriously, “Yes, because they both end in antelope.”

Merry Christmas!!