O'Foiled Again

Last night, Cameron set up his leprechaun traps and then ran to bed.  "I don't think I'm going to read my book tonight," he explained.  "I need to go to sleep right away so the leprechauns come."

At 4 a.m., I awoke with that odd feeling that someone was watching me.  I opened my eyes and there stood Cameron.  "Mama," he whispered, "I think the leprechauns are here!  I see a green light flashing out in the living room!"

(I am pretty sure the flashing green light was our DVR, notifying us that there are new recordings awaiting us.  Probably PBS specials about string theory or the history of Amish hat making.  Definitely not that special about what happens behind the scenes on The Bachelor. I mean, I don't even watch The Bachelor!  So why would I record the 20/20 special?  I wouldn't!  That is so not why the green light was flashing!)

Cameron crawled into my bed.  "I really want to go out there and just say, 'Hi Leprechauns?  How's it doing?  I'm Cameron.' But I probably shouldn't because I might scare them and then they'd jump on my shirt.  I'm so excited though."  He was literally shaking with excitement.

I sent him back to bed, where he stayed until . . . 4:30am, at which point he returned to again report on the leprechauns.  I sent him back to bed.  In the morning, I woke up to find that Cameron had already been awake for hours.  "We didn't catch them," he reported.

We had decided upon two traps last night, after Cameron explained to me that the third trap he had designed would require the installation of hooks in our ceiling.  The Lego bridge trap had worked exactly as designed.  Floating in the water was a leprechaun hat and the water had turned green!  However, a note explained that Maureen Leprechaun had been rescued from near drowning and dried off using "those nice big white towels."  A crumpled pile of paper towels was near by! 

The coffee canister design, it turned out, was flawed.  The toothpick ladder remained intact and a note explained that Patrick Leprechaun, only three years old, had climbed the ladder and fell into the trap.  The older leprechauns realized that the ladder would not hold their weight, so they formed a leprechaun pyramid to reach the top.  They then instructed wee Patrick to pile up all his gold and stand on top of it, at which point the big leprechauns reached down and pulled him out.  So, the good news is we scored some leprechaun gold.  Bad news is, it turned out to be FAKE! Plastic gold! 

Cameron also left the leprechauns a challenge.  He hid some Lego minifigures around the house and told the leprechauns that if they found them all and identified them correctly, they would received "25 cents and a Lego minifigure!"  We left an example for them -- Indiana Jones.  This time WE bested the leprechauns.  They failed to find one minifigure and misidentified the others as "Patty O'Skywalker," "Sean McMinifigure," and "Seamus Fitztrooper!"

So, even though we failed (again) to catch the leprechauns, we are gathering more data.  Watch out next year!!!