"With what?" I asked. There was a hesitancy to my voice; not all tasks the kids request are feasible and/or interesting.
"I need to make a trap."
I thought about it. Both feasible and interesting. "Okay," I said. "For what?"
"A Leprechaun."
So much for feasible.
"But you can't do all the fake stuff," he said. Apparently he had Googled this prior to his asking me, and saw some sites showing parents how to stage Leprechaun pranks. "Don't make footprints with your thumb, or sprinkle glitter. If you do then I'll know it was you and Mom."
My mind immediately went to the Elves. Fortunately, he didn't make the same connection. I still had to play it off. "We don't have any time for that," I assured him.
He had an idea for how to build a trap, and he started to sketch it for me. It involved a box. But other than two sides of the box his drawing was incredibly abstract.
"Can you show me?" I asked.
In a lucky twist of fate, he happened to know where he had an old shoe box. My wife confirmed the box was not needed for anything more useful than a Leprechaun trap, so we cut the lid off and I helped him build it.
It's your basic box trap, with bait on a string tied to a strut holding up one end of the box. When the Leprechaun grabs the bait, the strut will fall and the box will come down. Our bait is a gold coin, because Leprechauns are greedy.
"Once we'll catch him, we'll have all his gold and then we'll be the richest people ever. Because gold is worth a thousand," he explained. He may be a little greedy, too. I chuckled at gold is worth a thousand. He didn't say a thousand...anything, just a thousand, because in his world, a thousand is one big gosh-darn number and if you have that many it doesn't matter what they are.
My wife gave us some candy and clover rings to use as supplementary bait. We covered the string with them. Now, we wait.
If this ends up being my last post, thanks for having read along. We just retired with Leprechaun gold, like a thousand of it, and are now taking up residence on our own private island.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
