The Time I Almost Met The Easter Bunny
As a youngster, it was always with great anticipation and excitement when my family [father, mother, sister and self] travelled from our home in North San Diego County to visit my maternal grandparents in Alhambra, CA. The occasions were often centered around a holiday and those social calls were always accompanied by a huge gathering of relatives, a tremendous amount of food and beverage and a riotous quantity of clamor. That little, old, ivy-covered house on Atlantic Boulevard really rocked. Such were the standard mores of being a part of a large Italian family. Those days have long passed, but the memories endure.
One memory from a visit to Alhambra during a holiday stands out vividly in my mind’s eye as I view today’s capture of a Cottontail Rabbit. It reminds me of the time I almost met the Easter Bunny.
I was five or six years old and it was in the wee-waking hours of an Easter Sunday morning at Grandma Sadie’s and Grandpa Joe’s. The bedroom was just off the living room area and I lay awake in the dark listening to the hushed silence. Then I heard it … the floor in the living room creaked. Remarkably it creaked again and again. I knew who the author of the “complaining” floor boards was: the Easter Bunny!
Slowly I slipped from bed and approached the closed door all the while continuing to hear the rabbit as he surely was placing goodies around the living room for my sister and me. What I saw when I cracked the door came as a shock. I really thought I was going to see a giant rabbit. It wasn’t the Easter Bunny at all, though. It was my grandpa checking and rechecking the window and door locks. Situated around the room were Easter baskets and toys, so the bunny had been there and gone and Grandpa, I assumed, was merely closing up the avenues left open for “the rabbit” to do his deed.
Later in life when the truth about the clandestine lagomorph was revealed by the tall-tale-telling adults, I smiled and thought about the time I almost met the Easter Bunny.
~ Anecdote and Cottontail capture, The Time I Almost Met The Easter Bunny © Jerry L. Ferrara