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A story about a developmentally disabled chap who overpowers and holds captive a diminutive person (a midget or dwarf) because he mistook him for a troll has been told a number of ways. The person captured is variously said to have been a door-to-door salesman, a delivery person, or a Jehovah's Witness. His captor is described as having Down syndrome, autism, or as being mentally challenged, and in various tellings he calls his mom, his sister, his dad, or even his personal assistant/caretaker to report his victory in locking up the creature he has encountered at his doorstep: March 2010 versions were updated to present the person held against his will as a census taker, which was then underway. April 2010 versions, while again presenting the victim as a census taker, had him mistaken for a leprechaun instead of a troll, a bit of story re-engineering that worked to make the tale a wee bit more believable by giving the developmentally disabled fellow who snatched him a motive for doing so, because lore has long held that a captured leprechaun must hand over his pot of gold to the person holding him. Although the events described in the tale are not impossible, they're somewhat improbable. For this scenario to play out, not only would a developmentally disabled adult have to mistake a diminutive person for a fantasy creature such as a gnome or a troll, but he would also have to act on that assumption (as opposed to merely being bemused by it) by violently and physically overpowering the person at the door, then holding him captive. Finally, that developmentally disabled and violent (possibly delusional) adult would had to have been left unsupervised in the home. The yarn about a delivery person's being mistaken for a fantasy creature and held against his will by someone whose mental capacities were insufficient to grasp the nature of what confronted him bears a strong resemblance to the legend in which a small child is mistaken for a gnome by drug-tripping teens, captured, and only recognized for the frightened child she is after spending the night locked in their closet. Mental incapacity plays the starring role in both stories, even though in the latter legend it's self-induced. The kidnapped midget salesman story also bears a passing resemblance to the legend about a penguin smuggled home from the zoo, a tale that almost always features a developmentally disabled protagonist. In both legends, the abductor makes off with living creatures in the mistaken belief he gets to keep them.
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