The Easter Bunny is Here!

“You should put your bunny away at night,” my neighbor said retrieving the newspaper from his driveway.

“We don’t have a bunny, Harold,” I said fetching the paper from my driveway.

“He was in your yard.”

“We don’t have a bunny.”

“He’s white.”

“We don’t have a bunny!”

“Yeah… right.”

Harold held plenty of opinions that I didn’t espouse most famous among them were that: grass was the best garden plant; guns were great at repelling squirrels and the prettiest woman’s outfit was a poodle skirt and saddle shoes. But this bunny business was different because it didn’t deal with opinions but cold, hard facts. Fact: I lived in my house and I’d never seen a bunny in the yard. Fact: Harold was 86 years old so maybe his brain was playing tricks on him? Or maybe he’d dreamt of the bunny in our yard? Or maybe Harold was just plain blind. I needed a second opinion.

“Have you seen a bunny in our yard?” I asked Mr. Wonderful as I laid the newspaper on the table. Mr. Wonderful shook his head while biting into his egg salad sandwich.

“Harold says we had one in our yard.”

“He also says we’re idiots for killing our grass,” he said.

“That’s his opinion.”

“In his mind, it’s a fact that we’re idiots.”

Mr. Wonderful had a point about Harold. I went outside to look at my plants for any bunny nibble damage.

“Happy Saturday!” our neighbor Charles said grinning and waving. “Hey, your bunny is cute.”

“Charles, we don’t have a bunny,” I said.

“He was in your yard last night.”

“We don’t have a bunny.”

“He’s white.”

“We don’t have a bunny!”

“Take it easy,” he said backing into his house fast.

First Harold, now Charles?! This bunny business was sweeping the neighborhood! It was epidemic like the plague, the flu or lactose intolerance. I marched to the corner to clear my head. Passing by Jerry’s garden I caught the scent of roses in the air. I paused to smell his crimson blooms.

“Your bunny is real cute,” Jerry said popping up behind a rose bush wearing his San Francisco 49ers baseball cap.

“We don’t have a bunny!”

“I saw him in your yard last night,”

“We don’t have a bunny!”
"But I saw him--"
"There isn't a bunny," I said marching off to the park and leaving Jerry speechless. This walk around the neighborhood would calm my nerves and help settle the score. All of my closest neighbors said they’d seen “our” bunny. Were they playing some big joke on me? I checked the date, it wasn’t April Fool’s Day, but still I felt like a fool that all of our neighbors had seen a bunny in our yard and I hadn’t.

After several laps around the park I returned home just as our yard was cast in afternoon shadow. When suddenly right in front of our house, nibbling on my baby nasturtiums, I saw it: The bunny! It was white and so cute. But it didn’t belong to us. It belonged to Harold, Charles, Jerry and everyone who saw it because it was… our Easter Bunny.

Happy Easter! Wishing you joyful beginnings at this splendid time of year!