December 25, 2020. The trail camera I set up catches something strange.

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December 25, 2021. Every Christmas night, around the same hour, I hear these horrible cracking sounds coming from my fireplace. Like breaking bones. I figured migratory birds had made a nest inside or something.
So this year I decided to wait for the noise and take a picture up the chimney…

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December 25th, 2022. Every year I wait for this thing in the living room, but I think it knows when I’m awake. When I finally fall asleep, it slithers in and leaves a piece of slimy coal below the tree.
When I went to sleep tonight, I set a camera up to take pictures every minute. This is what it found.

_{© Eduardo Valdés-Hevia}