The Santa Trap (A Cautionary Tale)

There was once a little boy; a very mean and greedy and selfish little boy called Wilfred Bagstowe who thought that if he trapped Santa Clause he could force him to give him as many toys as he wanted and so, knowing that Santa always came down the chimney, he set up a trap in his fireplace and then, when it was set, went up to bed to sleep.

And, the next day, when Wilfred awoke, he rubbed his hands together with glee and chuckled to himself as he ran downstairs to see if he had caught Santa in his trap.

There in the fireplace he saw the Santa trap and he could hear something moving inside; the trap wobbling back and forth as the thing struggled to get out.

“Ha!”, said Wilfred, eagerly, rushing over to peer inside the trap, “I’ve caught him”.

But then, opening the flaps of the box, to Wilfred’s horror, he saw, not a jolly old, fat man with a long beard in a red suit but an enormous and very ferocious polar bear.

“Raaarr!”, the Polar bear roared as it leapt out of the box and proceeded to chase a very frightened Wilfred around the room.

It chased him up stairs and it chased him back down again; it even chased him out of doors and round and round the house in his stripy pyjamas.

Now, some say that the Polar Bear ate Wilfred up with cranberry sauce; others that it was just Santa Clause dressed in a large white polar bear costume and that he forgave Wilfred once he had learned his lesson but, whatever the true story, it should serve as a valuable lesson to children everywhere that if you are mean and greedy and selfish and try to play tricks on Santa you may end up like Wilfred.

Raaarr!