Do Not Underestimate the Leprechauns

Those leprechauns turned out to be pretty crafty. Last night, we carefully set up our traps. The hat trap was placed next to the fridge -- the scene of last year's green milk escapade. Since Cameron was desperately hoping to spot a leprechaun, he chose to put the rock climbing wall trap in his room. Unbeknownst to him, this posed a unique challenge for the leprechauns, who had to stay up late, waiting for him to fall into a deep sleep, before sneaking in his room. Cameron, always inventive, also decided at the last minute to place out a bowl full of water with some strips of paper over it. He concluded that the leprechauns would innocently walk out onto the paper and then -- SPLASH! -- into the water they'd go. We all went to bed, confident that in the morning we would have our very own leprechauns. Cameron even planned to bring them to school to share for news. Alas, it was not to be.

Early this morning, Cameron came running into my room breathlessly. "I think I caught a leprechaun!" he panted. "The trap door is down!" We hurried to his room where we found this.

The leprechauns had left a note explaining that they had fallen into the trap but had blasted their way out! As a reward, they had left us some necklaces and a challenge to try to catch them next year.

We headed out to the kitchen and were certain of our success when we saw that the false top of the hat had fallen in. But, again, the leprechauns outsmarted us. "Very tricky, human!" their note read. "We were fooled by your trap -- we thought the gold was real. But, we are tricky too! We used our leprechaun socks to make a rope and climb out of your trap! Since you did fool us, we left you a surprise. See you next St. Patrick's Day -- The Leprechauns." Inside the trap was a chain of little green tights and a small replica of a leprechaun that grows when you put it in water.

And Cameron's simple water trap? The water had turned GREEN and there was a little note letting us know how much the leprechauns had enjoyed the swimming!

Finally, having inspected all our traps, we settled down for breakfast. Cereal. With GREEN milk!