Happy Easter!

In honor of Easter, I'm showing a well aged chocolate bunny who has been living in my freezer for nearly 25 years. It was never intended that he should last this long, but sometimes these things happen!

I bought him in Rochester NY, where a sister of mine was living at the time, but for some reason he didn't get eaten that first year. After that, it became a matter of curiosity to see how long he might last, and he has lived up to the challenge beyond any expectations - even surviving a fall off a table, and a mild dog attack. Of course one of these years he might not make it back to the freezer.

The Easter Bunny does make an appearance in the last of the Oz books published by Reilly & Lee, in 1963. In Merry Go Round in Oz, Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion visit the Easter Bunny and his workshop during preparations for an Easter party in the Emerald City. It's a shame John R. Neill didn't get to illustrate this episode, as he had such a way with rabbits! Still, Dick Martin came up with appropriately festive bunnies. Incidentally, there's quite a resemblance between Martin's endpaper design for Merry Go Round, and Neill's design for The Yellow Knight of Oz!