Leprechauns!

Today while Sam was at preschool I thought it might be fun if he got a visit from the leprechauns. I have some teensy tiny baskets in my craft stuff, so I put a chocolate covered miniature marshmallow in each one and hung them on the branches of a bush outside. While Sam and I were working in the garden I casually mentioned that I saw something moving around in the bushes, but Jonas needed something so I didn't have time to go check it out. I told him he should go look and see if maybe there was a squirrel's nest or a bird nest or something in there. He went over about 5 feet from the bush and sort of glanced in its direction and said there was nothing.

"Oh, ok," I said. "It's just that it's getting close to St. Patrick's Day and I wasn't sure if Leprechauns come around here or not. We should probably keep a look out for them."


That changed things. He definitely thought we needed to take a closer look. Key word: WE. He was definitely not going near that bush by himself. So while I kept weeding we talked casually about it. There was definitely nothing to be scared of. Even if it WAS a Leprechaun, you'd NEVER see one. They sleep during the day and they definitely don't want any little boys to catch them. It was probably just a bird or a squirrel or something anyway.


When he couldn't stand it anymore, I finally got up to take a look at the bush. We went to the opposite side of where the treasures were, and pretty soon I heard,


"Mommy! I see something!"


It was a ball. Not our ball. Some random dirty old ball was under that bush. The leprechauns must have taken it from some other kid's house and hid it there. Awesome.


We kept looking for quite a while. The baskets were inches from his face and he looked right past them. Finally he saw one. You can imagine the look on his face.


"Mommy!" he gasped.


"Wow, what's that inside?"


"Chocolate!"

"Is it?"


"Yeah! ... or maybe poop or something."


I laughed pretty hard. "You think a leprechaun pooped in that basket?"


"Maybe, because they play tricks."


Then he noticed the 5 other baskets still hanging up. "Mommy! A LOT of poop!" ... "This is magic!"


We gathered up all the baskets and there was quite a bit of deliberating on whether it was poop or chocolate. He wanted me to try it first. I wanted to try it together. I kept counting to 3, but he seemed to have no intention of putting it in his mouth. Then all of a sudden he popped one in and pronounced it to be chocolate. Brave boy.


After some more treasure hunting we heard someone's voice and both looked up at the same time. In our driveway, about 20 feet away there was a surveyer wearing a bright orange work vest digging a hole.


"There he is!"

"Ya think? You wanna go see?"


He nodded and ran right over to him. I should explain here how funny an orange vest can make someone look when you have leprechauns on the brain. He was a round, jolly looking fellow, but a big guy, not leprechaun size. He would make a great Santa, though, if you slapped a white beard on him. He had a big booming voice, and when he saw Sam running over so excited he called out, "Hey, Buddy! I'm looking for treasure. You wanna help me?"


Sam turned back to look at me. His jaw was on the ground and his eyes were huge. He turned back to the orange-vested leprechaun and nodded up and down as big as he could.


He showed Sam his magic stick that made funny noises. He waved it over the ground and said, "When we find treasure it'll sound like this," (and he waved it over the hammer in his tool belt.) I was trying SO hard not to bust up laughing. You could just see exactly what Sam was thinking: I AM LOOKING FOR TREASURE WITH A REAL LIFE GIANT LEPRECHAUN!!!


After that it was pretty much just boring surveying stuff. (Sam was really hoping to dig a hole, I think.) They were looking for the property line and were radio-ing back and forth but couldn't seem to find it. "Nope, no treasure today. Sorry, Buddy."

I didn't want Sam to think road workers and surveyors and anyone wearing an orange vest are all magical people that play tricks and leave treats for little boys, so I told him that he should tell the man about what he found. So Sam showed him the baskets and said, "We found these in our bush."


For a second there the man's eyes got really big and he looked at me like, what the heck??? Maybe for a half a second he thought we found some indian baskets or something? I don't know, but he was definitely surprised for a moment.


I told him that we were pretty sure the leprechauns left them and that when we saw him in our driveway Sam thought maybe HE was the leprechaun. He got a good laugh out of that and assured Sam he was a little too big to be a leprechaun.

Sam had some candies in gold wrappers left over from his pinata, so he put those in the baskets and hung them in the bush for the leprechauns to find. I have a feeling we may be spending a lot more time in the bushes the next couple weeks.