The Bunny Hunt

Celebrating an annual Easter tradition that keeps the whole family hopping!

- Janet Hanna

When my three sisters and I were young, it was our father who hid our Easter baskets each year. Sometimes the treats were hidden inside the house and other years they were hidden outside. Daddy really enjoyed tucking our baskets of decorated eggs and chocolate bunnies in hard to-find places.

As we grew older, our father took special delight in making the search for our chocolate bunnies as difficult as possible. I remember one year when I was a teenager, I found my basket nestled behind the valance of the curtains in my parents’ bedroom.

Daddy had a large yard with shrubs, trees and many flower beds. Bunnies were inserted behind weathered boards that looked like they had not moved for decades; hidden amid the wood pile and the rock pile; shoved deeply beneath the shrubbery; and even buried under stumps, brush and grass clumps. One year, my husband, John, had to climb a ladder to get his bunny out of a fir tree!

Even after my sisters and I all got married and began families of our own, Dad continued to host the Easter Bunny Hunt every year. We told him that he didn’t need to do it now that we were adults, but he always said it was a good excuse to get his girls together. The size of the group grew steadily as we all had our own children, and one year it became so large that Daddy couldn’t remember where he had hidden all the bunnies —and therefore no help was available for the last searchers.