Easter this year was my first full-contact, no-holds-barred Easter in a long time.
It’s not that Easters didn’t “happen” for me over the past several years. But this was the first one in years that I spent in the good old-fashioned way: inundated by an infestation of kids.
Easters over the past eight years or so have been tame by comparison, because after my wife’s disabilities due to stroke in 2010, we found it necessary to spend winters in Florida, where she could spend time outdoors in her wheelchair-accessible garden. Each year, we would return north to see our kids and grandkids in early May, when the snow had melted and her northern garden was just starting to emerge.
But Easter? It was still too cold up north for her to be comfortable most years in March or April, so travel was out of the question for us. And because the grandkids were still in school, they couldn’t come south to visit. And so, year after year, our Easter weekends were quiet and peaceful.
After my wife passed away last year, I decided to spend more time up north with family instead of all alone. And so Thanksgiving — and Easter — were back on the table for me.
Although my tolerance for all the hectic, messy mayhem was a bit rusty, it didn’t take me long to get back into the kid-style Easter mood. In the evening we colored a couple dozen eggs with only minimal disaster, and in the morning when the Easter baskets miraculously appeared, the mayhem turned to messy glee.
The kids always get treats any time they come to visit, because just inside my front door are six old-time mailboxes, each with a grandkid’s name on it. Whenever they come over, they dash to their boxes, where they find candy, games, toys and other treats inside.
In anticipation of the coming Easter treat-storm, their baskets were a bit sparse this time, but they didn’t mind because they trusted that the Easter Bunny would make up the difference. Fortunately, when the Easter baskets appeared, none of them noticed that the Bunny’s baskets held a lot of the same kind of stuff their mailboxes usually hold when I’m stuffing them. The Easter Bunny, it seems, must also spend a lot of time at Walmart. Funny I never saw him there.
And then, once the basket-candy had been eaten and most of the flimsiest toys had been broken, it was time to find all the Easter eggs that the Bunny had hidden outside, all around the house and in the oak forest at the back of the yard.
I have it on good authority that the Easter Bunny hid exactly 36 eggs, but after an hour-long search, the kids returned with only 35 eggs in their baskets. Jack, the eldest of the grandkids, squinted one eye and declared something like 97.3 percent victory. I squinted one calculating eye, then the other, and took his word for it.
But where was the missing egg? Had it been poached?
The night before, the dogs had barked furiously at the slider windows, and in the dark we spotted a raccoon scurrying across the patio paving bricks. “Hey,” I said, “that might be one of the eight raccoons that pull the Easter Bunny’s sleigh! On Lumpy, on Stumpy, on Dumpy….”
The kids all stared at me. (Hey, it’s been a long time since I did Easter.) They were pretty sure the Bunny didn’t use a sleigh or travel with a crew like that. I said, “Are you sure? That’s a lot of eggs he has to deliver.” But they held firm — it was probably just an unaffiliated raccoon wandering about, looking for trouble, they thought.
And then, the next morning, when only 35 of the 36 eggs were found, I was starting to think they might be right. The culprit could not have been a sleigh-coon because, after all, why would any of the Bunny’s own posse steal one of the eggs they are charged to deliver? (Well, Trumpy might try, but the other more mature raccoons would keep him in line.)
So the prime vermin of interest is the renegade raccoon — but I wouldn’t rule out the squirrel, or even the chipmunk, that are always hanging around the house. They’re both a bit sketchy.
I’m willing to clear the skunk of all suspicion, though. After all, if he had been in the neighborhood at the time of the crime, I think we’d know. Besides, the house was enough of a disaster after all that egg-coloring and basket-deflowering, so I thought it best not bring Mr. Skunk in for questioning.
And so, as of this writing, the case of the missing Easter egg is yet unresolved. I will be sure to keep you posted if the offender is apprehended, but for now I can say no more because it’s an ongoing investigation.
All I can say is: I forgot how much fun Easter can be!
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
