* THIS POST HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SPORTS

Yesterday my almost seven-year-old (tomorrow! OMG!) came home from school and announced that she was going to make a leprechaun trap. I vaguely recalled making one with her when she was in preschool, but this is by no means an annual activity around here so of course I turned to the internet.

It turns out when you Google “leprechaun” you get fourteen million results. But when you add “trap” it goes down to a million, which makes no sense at all because what on earth is there to say about leprechauns besides how to trap those wily little SOBs?

Anyway, in case you needed proof that the world is full of really fucking weird people with way too much time on their hands, allow me to introduce you to Exhibit A:

Yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen.

I Googled some more.

This one was more my speed, but it turns out we didn’t have any green construction paper.

(It’s worth noting here that while most of the homemade traps I found were shoebox size or smaller, this site explains that a leprechaun is “a small old man–about two feet tall–dressed like a shoemaker”. He *may or may not* get in through the chimney.)

I mumbled something about reading in the news that leprechauns had gotten wise to the ways of their trappers, and maybe the best trap would be something simple that wouldn’t arouse any suspicions. Even though the kid is off-the-charts-brilliant, she bought it. In the end, our trap looked like a cardboard version of this (because yes, I was too lazy to get the camera and honestly, there wasn’t too much to see), minus the hay and the giant projection screen in the back:

I was anxious all night that I was going to forget to spring the trap, and even sent myself several reminder emails and text messages (“LEPTRAP!”). Finally the girls fell asleep, at which point I realized I had no idea what leprechauns were supposed to do. Did they take something? Leave something? Make a mess? Clean up a mess? I knew that pots of gold were involved, but as it happens, I didn’t have one of those handy. Google, Facebook and Twitter were all useless. Exhausted, I placed two old, stale Hershey’s Kisses under the box, kicked the stick out of the way and called it a night.

At five o’clock this morning, the kid was standing four inches from my ear and bellowing into it.

“Mom, he came! The leprechaun came! I didn’t catch him but he left me two chocolate kisses! I’m kinda freaked out right now.”

“That’s awesome, honey,” I mumbled into my pillow.

“Was it you?” she asked. “Was it, mom? Do you swear it wasn’t you?”

“I swear it wasn’t me,” her dad replied helpfully.

“Me too,” I added, clearly swearing that her dad had had nothing to do with it.

It’s totally going to suck when she finds out we are both full of shit.