The Easter Egg Hunt

It's Easter. I thought to write something about this time of year - doesn't mean it's all warm and fuzzy, though.

enjoy.

The burrow is all cute from the outside.

It’s got a door on it with a little pathway leading up to it.

And I suppose you think that lovely, white bunny with his purple, velvet vest, all trimmed in gold and with silver buttons looks just lovely and perfect as he scampers along – his little tail boppin’ along ever so cutely.

Does it ever cross your mind how he gets to look so cute?

Exactly where does he get all those eggs for the hunt in the village every year?

Who do you think makes them?

No, the parents don’t go out to the stores and buy them – that’s for the baskets inside the home. The bunny you see running away around 7am is the one who plants the eggs around the village – the ones your kids often find, as they happily run and squeal with delight at how beautiful they all are.

You don’t realise that the bunny doesn’t make any of those eggs. He’d never get his greedy little paws dirty with chocolate or sickly sweet candy. He doesn’t spend hours on end painting those china eggs only to have one flaw in one and have to throw it away.

That’s my work you all love to fawn over.

And you give him all the praise.

And besides, Easter isn’t really what you think. It sort of depends on what you believe in – whether you believe it’s the time Jesus died and rose three days later, or the worshipping of Ishtar (pronounced Easter) – either way, you’re taking a few days off to indulge in chocolate and worship something or somebody.

But really, I haven’t seen the light of day in... 

well...um...

...you know, I don’t rightly remember. Yes, it’s been that long since I’ve been outside the burrow, since I disappeared from the outside world. But I am a Human Being – I do think people have just forgotten that I went missing when I was young; that they stopped looking for me when he grabbed my hand in the park and dragged me off to the burrow, leaving me there.

After all, a talking rabbit was a really cool thing when you’re a seven year old and your folks were far too busy to have another child. But from what I heard, my nanny was blamed for losing me in the park. The rabbit told me that they stopped looking for me.

I know for a fact that’s not true.

I had the door open a crack one day and heard some people sitting nearby talking (I can’t see anything normally past the door, just the meandering path and a road). They were around the corner.

“Do you remember when that child went missing?” an old lady’s voice asked.

Another just as old answered, “Oh my! Yes! The nanny was blamed and they still haven’t found the poor little soul.”

The first tsked, “They’d be all grown up now if they were still around.”

“Wasn’t that in the 40’s or the 50’s?”

“No... I remember it was 1969. The year of the first man on the moon.” The first replied, “Oh, look at the time, we must be going.”

The voices disappeared as they collected their brood of children and went home.

“And what do you think you are doing?” his voice snapped.

I turned, terrified, forgetting when he was going to finish his nap, “I just wanted to peek outside for a moment.”

His eyes turned red with anger as his ears pinned hard against his back, “And I have told you many times that there’s nothing for you out there anymore!” he pointed back to the darkened den, “Get back to work! And fix my vest, I have promo to do with a television station tonight. I can’t look all dirty as you left it last year.”

“I did fix it.” I held up his vest. It was all clean and new shiny buttons had been stitched on with gold thread, “I got new buttons.”

He looked at himself in the mirror as he tugged at it, the anger suddenly gone, “Very nice. Where did you get the buttons?”

“At the last market we went to.” I looked to my feet, knowing he didn’t like me socialising when we went shopping.

“Well, you did well.” He turned as he grabbed his basket filled with eggs that I had prepared for him on the table, “Time for me to go. Remember, keep the lantern in the window lit and the fire burning for the cameras to follow me home – and stay out of sight!”

“Of course.” I nodded.

The door closed.

I pulled out of my pocket a little remote control with a switch on it. Turning it from ‘off’ to ‘on’, I smiled. The tables were about to be turned on him. Inside the basket was a homing device woven into fibres of ribbon I had bought at the market as well as the buttons.

What Rabbit didn’t know was that I had been outside the burrow for about an hour that afternoon to place a little something for the ladies at the seat to find. It looked like a phone – but it wasn’t. It was a device to show where I was. It showed where Rabbit was... and it had all my details about what has happened to me.

Now, all I had to do was wait for him to return from the promo spot.

This will take about an hour.

By that time, the police will have found me, and then they’ll find him.

Problem will be what to do when they find out that the Easter Bunny kidnapped me to do his work.