Nest For The Easter Bunny

By Mary Mungar © 1988

Issue: April, 1988

During the lean years of the 1930's in the rolling hills of western Tennessee, Easter was as exciting a day as Christmas for my brother and me. The Easter Bunny was just as important as Santa Claus. He always left each one of us a nest full of colorful eggs on Easter morning.

We had a big day the day before Easter, when we each had to build a nest for the Easter Bunny to leave our eggs in. We believed that the one who built the nicest nest would get the most eggs.

We started our project by trying to find the best spots to hide the nests that we would build. The large honeysuckle bush in the yard was always a good choice, then there was the tall grass around the budding apple trees in the orchard, or maybe even a burrow beneath the towering peach trees. There were so many places to hide the nice clean nests on the hill supporting our grandmother's great white house that our decisions were hard to make. Once we had decided on our spots, we took off to the barn to inspect all the bales of hay for the cleanest hay we could find. With our arms full of hay, my brother and I raced to the spots we had picked and worked for hours making our nests for the Easter Bunny. We gathered up all the chicken feathers we could find to line the inside of the nests to make them soft.

When the nests were finished, we stood back and admired our works of art. I thought proudly that surely my nest would contain the most eggs on Easter morning, while at the same time my brother's mind was filled with the same thoughts.

Very early Easter morning, we both went running to our separate nests to see who got the most eggs. Of course it was a tie, for some strange reason, we always got the same amount of those beautiful eggs.

The greatest mystery of my young life was how a rabbit could lay hard boiled eggs of such brilliant colors.