He's seven and a half feet tall. He wears a menacing, frozen grin with honed buck teeth. And the ears! Oh, the tall, pointy ears with their radar-keen ability to find children, hunt them down, and...give them candy.
Despite the fact that Lu missed the basic point about the candy (which she really knew nothing about until this weekend, thanks to all you well-meaning Easter present-givers), she recognized the basic evil of the Easter Bunny. WAY scarier than Santa. "He's too scared-y for me, Mama," she told me between heaving sobs, as she and Jason hid in a corner of the El Paso Country Club during the festive post-egg-hunt brunch. She has confused the words "scared" and "scary" in such a smart, efficient way that if you hear me talk about how scaredy something is, just deal with it — I am evolving the language along with Lu.
The whole morning was not scaredy. Just the pre-hunt part, where all the kids, divided by age, milled around waiting for things to get started, many of them looking like they wanted to puke. Lu was anxious. She was trying to find her A game. It was not unlike the start of a triathlon (if you think of Gu as candy).
Once the hunt/race was underway, Lu had a great time. She wasn't quite as fast as I'd hoped, but I could see her competitive spirit showing when she began to take eggs out of other kids' baskets. With the help of her cousin Alyssa, who has a multi-year track record as the winner of the Golden Egg (which yields some fantastic, cellophane-wrapped basket that I am glad not to have to take home), she made quite a haul.
During the post-hunt brunch, Evil Bunny loomed large. A big PR campaign of juggling, schmoozing, kissing babies. Lu could see right through him. She didn't even get to enjoy the kid buffet of chicken strips, macaroni, hot dogs and various other yellow-beige-brown foods. And sadly, neither did Jason, who would have enjoyed it more than most kids. They slunk in the shadows, while the rabbit ran the room.
Lu is not done with Evil Bunny. He may have won this round, but she is training, waiting for next year. And in the meantime, she has a chocolate voodoo rabbit she intends to punish. One ear at a time.