The Brave Assistant Easter Bunny

Several years ago my dad took my 4-year-old nephew out to the desert early in the morning. Dad claimed it was to get sand for repotting some plants, but we all knew it was just to drive and hike in the desert at dawn.

It was also Easter Sunday.

They came back a couple of hours later, and we knew something strange must have happened when the kid dashed into the kitchen, with dried tear-stains on his cheeks, and solemnly announced, "It's OK everbody, the Easter Bunny is white and so he's not dead. It was just one of his assistant bunnies. He was brown and he'd already done his baskets."

No, the Easter Bunny isn't subcontracting out local deliveries to the jackrabbits ... Dad and nephew were walking along a wash when nephew spotted a dead rabbit and burst into tears because the Easter Bunny was lying there dead and he hadn't even reached our house yet. (I'm not sure whether it was the potential loss of Easter baskets or the dead bunny that upset him the most.)

With some fast talking and even faster thinking, my dad examined the bunny and declared him to be just an ASSISTANT bunny who had bravely delivered all his baskets before the Coyote got him.

Well, nephew knew all about Coyote from the Roadrunner cartoons and assumed he was as dastardly towards bunnies as he was roadrunners and decided that the brave bunny deserved a funeral ... fortunately my dad had come prepared to shovel some sand for potting soil. So they buried The Brave Assistant Easter Bunny there in the sandy wash, with some weed-flowers and a river rock headstone.

And my dad never, never, ever took a grandchild into the desert near Eastertime again.