Flying through the air, Grinch delivers Christmas cheer

Lake Charles, LA (KPLC) - It’s a bird - it’s a plane - no, it’s the Grinch.

If you’ve looked up and seen a green creature flying through the sky, your eyes are not deceiving you.

“This is just something I do around Christmas time,” said Oakdale resident Shaun Hayden. “Typically, anytime, really, in the month of December.”

This Grinch doesn’t come from Whoville, but Southwest Louisiana!

And he’s traveling by paramotor.

“So the paramotor, dry weight, is roughly about 74 pounds, this one,” he said.

But the man behind the costume is less green and less hairy.

“I’ve always had a passion about flying, never could afford to fly, you know, and no way or form is this cheap, but it is probably one of the cheapest forms of aviation,” he said.

“Typically, I dress up as Santa Claus, and I’ve been doing that pretty much ever since I started flying, and I figured I’d try something different, especially with the day and time we’re living in today. The Grinch fits the theme,” Hayden said.

But this Grinch isn’t trying to steal Christmas.

“Right now, it seemed like, it’s not a lot of smiling, you know, just with all going on, you know, with everything, and so if I could bring a smile on their face, you know, cut up, play around, this is something different, you know, they like it.”

And as he tells me, he’s had people reach out to him.

“I had another message from a lady, she’s told me the same thing, you know, that her husband came home with the biggest smile on his face,” said Hayden.

You could say his heart grew three sizes that day.

Hayden tells 7 News people have reached out, asking him to fly over their houses.

He says the weather plays a big role, but when he can, he’s happy to take to the skies.

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