oil painting by Will Kirkpatrick (sold)

Here's Will's story...

I’d like to share a Christmas experience. Last Christmas Eve, after friends had left and everyone was in bed, I was finishing up a few odd items before turning in myself. There were two bags of trash to bring to the barrel in the back and after depositing them, I remembered that in the hubbub of the day, we had not collected the mail from the box out front. The snow was deep and I drudged through it to the street, opened the box and fished out the mail, and turned to come in. To my amazement, this is what I saw!

I froze in my tracks. fearful of startling them. They were off and away in very few seconds. I don’t think they noticed me. I recovered, brought in the mail and went to bed. I mentioned the experience to no one, I was exhausted at the time and thought my mind may have been playing tricks on me and I did not want to be taken as an old man with failing mental faculties. Which, unfortunately, I am. So over the next few months, I decided to recreate what I saw from memory. The above is my exact remembrance.