Catch a leprechaun?

Last night Maddie made a Leprechaun Trap and set it by our fireplace.

You can see there is a rainbow around the sides and at the top; there is a little cup of "gold" rocks to lure the little guy in; there is a lot of green and sparkles of silver on the orange path to the cup of gold. She has a blue plastic tupperware type container above it, with a string, ready to DROP down and capture the greedy little guy when he tries to get the gold nuggets. She put lots of cotton balls in the holes of the blue plastic container, "to look like clouds" and in hopes of helping bring him closer.

Well, this morning, Nick raced to see what happened: the "cage" had fallen, but the little man had apparently escaped by shoving a rock through the small hole on top where the string was coming through the cage; he had tried to take a Miley Cyrus lip gloss of Maddie's, but what luck left us (or he did) was a little box of Milk Duds. The kids were excited, especially Nick. Maddie did the whole set up for him.

While living in New England, St. Patricks' Day was a BIG holiday; the Irish & Italian Catholics have kept this tradition alive and now every Sunday before March 17th, most cities have a big parade. At school, on March 17th back in 2004, when Maddie was in 2nd grade, the class left for P.E... When they returned they found green glitter all over the room and some chocolate gold coins around the room. She was soooo excited!! She asked me why the leprechauns had never come to our house... (?????) and so she has started creating the tradition (for Nick and for fun; she loves to have lots of fun traditions) in our home.