COLORADO -- A holiday hoax of sorts generated buzz on social media in Colorado.
A little girl asked Santa for a zebra for Christmas, and with zebras being hard to come by, her parents thought outside the box and used one of their horses as a canvas.
Christmas time is always a special time in Kelly Frye's household, especially when she and her husband, Chad, hear about the Christmas requests written up by their kids, Brody and Shelby.
For the most part, Brody's requests to Santa are pretty vanilla, but Shelby's are colorful.
"This year, she came up with the idea of a live zebra," said Frye.
To understand this request, you have to know a little bit about Shelby. She loves zebras - really loves them, which made this request all the more difficult, so Frye told her daughter this:
"He couldn't bring a zebra in his sleigh, first, because it was too large, and second, because live animals would probably poop on all the good boys' and girls' toys," she said.
After some thought, Kelly came up with an idea. What if she were to reach out to Santa and some of his elves to see if they could transform Shelby's favorite horse into her favorite animal?
And just like that, a little Christmas magic happened.
"It was amazing. Even better than what I could imagine," Frye said.
Santa's elves, one in particular named Ann, did something so creative and unique, Shelby was floored.
"She jumped right on his back and was riding around," said Frye.
Christmas Day is a special day regardless of what sort of gifts Santa brings, but let it be known: in the Frye country household, 2014 will forever be known as "the year of the zebra."
The family used non-toxic paint to transform the horse, and he won't be a zebra forever - recent snowfall in the area began to cause the stripes to fade just after the holiday.
(
WHDH - Jan 01, 2015)
