Wednesday, April 1, 2009

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.

1 comment:

  1. Shane and I were just talking about that too! I think we are skipping the Easter bunny thing entirely, It's easier for us to say that hiding eggs is a game people play on Easter. We probably wouldn't be able to keep our story straight about the bunny anyways!

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