Schoolteacher spots animal so rare on side of the road, it almost looks fake

A white nose on a reindeer may not be quite as one of a kind as Rudolph's red one, but it's still pretty rare. The genetic mutation that causes the white coloring isn't albinism, as it seems to affect only the color of the reindeer's fur and nothing more.

The white reindeer in the video below was spotted in Sweden by a vacationing schoolteacher as a herd crossed the road before her, according to the YouTube channel Photo Journals. Even this reindeer's horns are white, covered in a soft-looking fur that lends a fairy-tale quality to his appearance.

"In the pack there was only one white reindeer," Siv Poijo, who took the video, is quoted as saying on Photo Journals. "For the Sami people, the white reindeer have special significance — I think they bring luck and are considered holy." The Sami are the northernmost indigenous people of Europe, living in the Arctic areas of Scandinavia and Russia.

A white reindeer was born in May 2011 at the Victoria Farm Garden Centre in North Yorkshire, England. She became quite an attraction for the Christmas crowds that flock to the garden center every year to see the reindeer.

"The chances of a snow white reindeer being born is roughly one in 10,000," Mark Noble, one of the garden center's owners, told the Daily Mail. "[W]e were delighted when we discovered her in one of the fields on our farm."

It's no wonder the Sami believe that sighting a white reindeer brings luck; to see a one-in-10,000 animal, especially in the wild, is lucky indeed!