The Old Miser
Once upon a time, there was an old Miser who would hide his precious gold next to a tree behind his house. He placed the gold in a jar into a hole in the ground with a mat covering the fresh dirt that the Miser would dig up weekly. The Miser would take out his gold and gloat over his earnings every Saturday. His obsession to gloat over his gold led him to nail a mirror to the tree so he could view his gold from every angle and to see how happy he looked. Sometimes he would pretend that the person in the mirror was a different person, and he would converse with himself.
One Saturday morning, while he was arguing with his mirror image over whose gold was brighter, he spotted a young man reflected in the mirror, spying on him. Quickly thinking, the Miser pretended as if he didn’t see him and kept on gloating over his gold. The young man was hiding behind some stocky bushes that only covered about half of his body. The young man thought to himself, “What a fool this old man must be, to hide his hard-earned treasures in a hole in the ground.” The young man trotted away jumping up and down from the excitement of knowing he would be rich by next morning, and wouldn’t have to work a day more of his life. The Miser put his gold back into the hole and placed the mat over for disguise. He then walked back inside his home cheerfully acting as if everything was normal. He glanced over to where the boy was but he was already gone.
The old man started thinking about different solutions to the situation. He knew the boy wouldn’t dare steal his gold during the day and would come back during the night. Finally, he thought about how he would catch animals that he would hunt and thought he would use his trapping skills to catch the young man when he would come. He acted quickly by setting up a trap where a rope would pull anything that stepped near the mat covering the gold. The weight that would hold the boy up had to be about one hundred and fifty pounds, so he used three sand bags that weighed about fifty pounds each. He disguised the trap by putting leaves on top of the rope as well as putting multiple ropes that looked like vines, hanging from the tree so the young man wouldn’t suspect anything. The old Miser went to sleep comfortably, knowing that nothing could escape from his well-designed trap.
By about midnight, the Miser awoke to a loud scream. He knew exactly where it came from as he caught the boy trying to steal his gold. So confident he was of his trap that he even made himself a cup of coffee before going out to see the boy hanging upside down from the tree. The Miser had to be a little wiser about his hideouts moving forward.
(The Young Man Spying on the Miser: Flickr)
Author's Note:
This story is very similar to the Aesop's Fable about The Miser and His Gold but with a better ending for the Miser. In the original story, the Miser gloats over his gold on a weekly basis as well but does not notice a man spying on him. The next week when he goes to gloat over his earnings, he finds nothing in the hole. The Robber was long gone with his gold and had left nothing in the hole. Outraged the Miser starts screaming and worries the neighbors. The neighbors come to see what is wrong with the Miser and once he tells him of the situation, they have no pity for him as he should have never gloated his gold. I felt bad for the Miser so I changed the story to where the Miser is aware that the robber has found his hiding spot. I tried to base the trap in this story considering the time that Aesop's Fable was written, so there were no guns or special devices to catch the Robber.
Bibliography:
"The Miser and His Gold" from The Fables of Aesop by Joseph Jacobs.Web Source.