The Easter Bunny from Hell

Sometime in March 1999, I entered my mother's name in a drawing at the local drug store for an Easter Bunny, being given away by a greeting card company (oh, what the heck, I suppose they deserve a plug -- it was American Greetings). I didn't really know what the prize was, just that it was an Easter Bunny. I was picturing something about a foot, foot-and-a-half tall, cute, with a basket of pink flowers or something. I only put in one entry, and in her name, not mine.

Fast forward to Good Friday, April 2. The phone rings, my mother answers it. The person calling says "You've won our drawing for the Easter Bunny. Did you know you were in the drawing?" So later that day, I drive down there to pick up the prize, and sitting behind the counter is this HUGE box. What have I gotten myself into? So the skinny young cashier gets a hand truck and wheels this box out to my car. I'm trying to figure out how to get it in, and after a couple of tries, I finally stuff it into the trunk (although I can forget about closing the lid).

So I get home, wrestle the box into the kitchen (fortunately, it's not very heavy), and open it. Sitting there in a plastic bag is this humongous bunny. This is pretty funny now. I get it out of the bag and carry it to the living room, placing it on the floor in front of the piano. Its head comes to the keyboard! Later, my brave if not quite intelligent cat decides to defend his home against this intruder and attacks its foot, so I move it to a chair.

But the sheer size of the thing is not why I call it the Easter Bunny from Hell. I am convinced that it is evil. Look closely at its face. Sure, it's got a great big goofy grin, but that can't hide the true emotion that shows in its eyes. See how the tops of the eyes curve inward? Just exactly the way cartoonists draw people who are plotting something very nasty. I don't know what this creature is up to, but it can't be anything good. It'll probably come alive one of these nights and hack us to death in our sleep, and the cops will be mystified because there will only be this big, dumb, stuffed Easter Bunny with a big pink nose and long floppy ears in the house with the doors locked from the inside.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

NEW UPDATE: April 5, 2003 Buster had been out of his plastic bag and on the chair by the piano for a few days when I noticed something tucked under his paw.

A closer look confirmed my worst fears:

Yes, he now has an assistant to help him with his evildoing. If it or the tag in its ear looks familiar to you, that's because it's trying to pass itself off as a Beanie Baby named Dippy, "born" in 2002. But I know the truth and I'm being even more vigilant than before. I know Dippy moves around because the day after I took these pictures, I came home and found him lounging in Buster's ear. When I commented on this, my mother said yes, and Buster didn't like it, either. He'd told her he wanted Dippy moved back under his paw. I did it promptly so Buster wouldn't do something nasty in my sleep; he is still a greater threat than Dippy, whom Buster doesn't seem to have fully entrusted with the totality of his dark powers.

It took me a full two weeks after Dippy appeared to write this update to this page, which is obviously a result of Buster clouding my mind; only the overwhelming goodness of the Easter weekend restored my mental faculties sufficiently to get the word out.

2010 UPDATE: March 28, 2010 Every year, Buster has whammied my mother to make me get him out of his bag and put him on the chair. But sometime in the last seven years (Buster has fogged my memory of exactly when), the situation got even worse.