Bunny Tales

You know how there are lots and lots of stories about Santa, and the North Pole, and his reindeer?  Not so much with the Easter Bunny, which I never realized until recently when Sammy started pelting me with questions.  "How does the Easter Bunny get in our house?" he wanted to know.  "Where does the Easter Bunny live?" 

 

I really didn't know what to say, because there isn't a lot of lore associated with the Easter Bunny.  I've found a good way to deal with these questions is to throw them back at Sammy.  "Well, I don't know," I might say.  "I wonder if he comes in the window?"  Then Sammy will usually say something like, "No, I don't think he comes in the window.  I think he comes in the door."  "But our doors are locked; I wonder how he gets in?" I'll say.  "I think he has a key," Sammy says.  I love these little conversations because it gives me a glimpse into the mind of a 3-year-old.  He's at a really imaginative stage right now and he'll tell elaborate stories - with no point whatsoever, but I can't fault him that because he probably learned it from me.

 

During one of our Easter Bunny discussions, I told him a story about a few springs ago when I was cleaning out one of my flowerbeds and uncovered a whole nest of tiny, blind, sleeping baby bunnies.  I carefully covered them back up and left them undisturbed, in spite of knowing that in a few months I'd be battling with them over my newly sprouted peas and beans.  Sammy found the story fascinating and asked me to repeat it no less than 7 times.  Later, I heard him earnestly telling the story to Natalie. 

 

The part that I left out was that the mother abandoned her babies shortly after that.  I found them dead and smelly a few weeks later, and had to bury them in a corner of the yard.  I didn't want to scar Sammy for life by telling him the unhappy ending to the sweet baby bunny story.