The Easter Bunny Reads Letters

Dear Easter Bunny: We haven’t seen you in a while. How are you?

Dear Are You: I’m extremely busy this month. Apparently, you’re not. Move on. Next letter.

Dear Easter Bunny: Why is Easter sometimes in March and sometimes in April? 

Dear April Fool: I am a small, furry mammal. I don’t make those decisions. Next letter.

Dear Easter Bunny: If you are a small, furry mammal, how can you lay eggs? This is disturbing to my children who in school are taught that mammals bear live young.

Dear Egg-on-Your-Face: You should be asking the infinitely more important question: Why are commercial Easter eggs soft, brown, and sometimes liquidy in the center? Now THAT’s what I call disturbing!

Dear Easter Bunny: Why does your nose twitch?  

Dear Nosey: To stamp out and crush incoming Covid viruses that you humans keep spreading.  

Dear Easter Bunny: But, if your nose is twitching, your nostrils are open half the time.

Dear Nosey: You only get one answer per letter. That’s in my contract. But, if you must know, like you, I do need to breathe on occasion. Now move on. I’m on a tight schedule, and you’re making my nostrils want to close completely.

Dear Easter Bunny: Why do kids go first for the ears on chocolate replicas of you?  

Dear Ear Ache: They must be indelibly scarred by having watched replays of the 1997 Tyson- Holyfield bout, when, in the third round, Tyson removed part of Holyfield’s ear by dental force. Your kids should have been watching Sesame Street instead. Where’s the parental oversight, brother? Isn’t that a hallmark of being a primate?

Dear Easter Bunny: What’s your favorite novel: Charlotte’s Web, Tales of Peter Rabbit?  

Dear Not-So-Well-Red: Unlike self-centered humans, rabbits don’t favor reading novels with characters of their own species. And the way human authors portray rabbits and pretend to understand rabbit culture is an abomination. Humans know nothing of our predator-prey anxieties and lack of food options in winter. However, since I’m pressed for my personal habits, I will say that I enjoy reading John Updike’s Rabbit novels. Reading the domestic tragedy, spiritual poverty, and noisy emptiness of human life? That’s catharsis for suffering all the condescending rabbit metaphors humans have ever created. One exception to reading about rabbit characters–and my absolute favorite novel–is The Year of the Angry Rabbit, by Australian author Russell Braddon, in which giant mutant rabbits run amok in the outback and come to dominate the planet. After your presumptuous question–Charlotte’s Web? Come on!–I suddenly feel like reading about giant, mutant, world-dominating rabbits again.  

Dear Easter Bunny: Like everything else, there seems to be a supply chain issue with Easter Grass. The shelves are barren. Can you help?  

Dear Grass-Head: First, if your state government is going to legalize it, then don’t ask me for help with grass. I only EAT grass. Second, we don’t nest in multi-colored shredded cellophane.  Noisy, plastic nesting material that smells of residual organic chemicals with a small, furry mammal in the middle is every coyote’s dream. Yeah, call me up when it’s back in stock.

Dear Easter Bunny: I’m barbequing in the back yard for Easter. What are you having?

Dear Que: Your back yard.

Dear Easter Bunny: Why do humans decorate eggs during Easter?

Dear Egg Head: Because chicken eggs are ugly. Also, to confuse hungry snakes.

Dear Easter Bunny: Are you related to the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, with nasty, big, pointy teeth and a viscous streak a mile wide?

Dear Python Fan: That’s actually me before morning coffee. Or like right now after your obnoxious question. My advice to you is: Run away!

Dear Easter Bunny: What does the phrase “multiply like rabbits” mean?

Dear Offensive: I find this human phrase and its connotation completely denigrating. I will only respond to correct your misguided pretense of understanding rabbit society. Maybe we like children. Maybe we need to make more bunnies because you’ll likely steal one, sell it at a box store, and put it in a cage for both little humans to gawk over and bigger humans to complain about cleaning-up after. I’ll have you know that rabbits engage in private, deeply romantic, and often monogamous relationships—ones that human society should emulate. But what you fail to accept–and what’s the true meaning of the phrase–is simply that rabbits are much better than humans in arithmetic.