Kentucky Chocolate Bunny

Kentucky Chocolate Bunny


Easter.
It means so much to so many people. It can be the holiest time of the year to hundreds of millions of people. And at the same time its a celebration of chocolate bunnies that lay eggs and hide them throughout your yard for countless boys and girls.
I grew up in a house that celebrated Easter from the religious point of view. There were no chocolate rabbits running around in our yard plopping eggs in low trees and under bushes. All of the neighbors would suffer from such a plight though. Every year on both sides and directly behind our home all our school friends would find poorly hidden nests of creamy, sweet chocolate delight.
As they ran around their yards looking for treats we drove off to church for Easter service. Our nose and hands were stuck to the rear car window like we were being pushed from behind, as we witness all our friends celebrating their newly found chocolate pleasures.
"There's no such thing as an Easter Bunny" my dad would claim as he drove past house after house of sugar enriched celebrating children.
"Its all just a way the big companies get rich and take away and distract from the true meaning of Easter." mom would testify to her belief in her Christian faith.
"But dad,....mom, you say that about Christmas too but we still get presents. How come we don't get chocolate bunnies or eggs at Easter?" I'd question forcing my face away from the window.
"Wait till tomorrow after work." Dad said. "I'll bring home a bunch of chocolate bunnies and eggs for you then."
Tomorrow? That's a long time for a kid to wait after seeing all his buddies and every other kid in the world walking around with a chocolate mustache. It's a long time for a kid to wait after hearing about how tall your school buddies chocolate rabbits were. But, that next day after school waiting ever so not patiently for dad to get home from work he finally came through as promised. A big plastic bag of Kentucky Chocolate Bunny's!
Well that's what we called them.
We never got a whole bunny, perfectly intact with all it's limbs connected. Or a perfectly formed egg in it's shiny wrapping. We got more of a Humpty Dumpty egg. And the chocolate bunnies were broken and cut up with dark and light chocolate limbs from many bunnies of different sizes. Just like a bucket of the Colonels. Long bunny ears, bunny legs, breasts, arms, bunny noses connected to chocolate eyes and stubby tails all broken away from its full form. Dad would buy all this by weight from the Sears Candy Dept. the day after Easter Sunday. It was all the broken Easter chocolate that they couldn't sell. The stuff other kids didn't want.
"It's a lot cheaper, it all taste the same, and you were going to break it off anyway. I just saved you the time of doing so. And you didn't have to hunt around the yard for it!" Dad would proclaim as he held high our bag of Kentucky Chocolate Bunny's. "Now who wants chocolate?"
True enough what he said, but it's like having Christmas with unwrapped broken toys.
We had seen in the stores, the few weeks leading up to Easter, the beautiful presented boxed rabbits. Some three feet high! Some detailed with different colored chocolate features, holding baskets of even more chocolate. Eggs that looked like huge gemstones that sparkled in the stores lights. Box after box piled high, beautifully presented to lucky girls and boys. Brown smooth shiny bunnies sitting behind clear plastic forms of themselves, with a beautifully painted box that made you think that that chocolate bunny lived in a happy meadow with real bunnies.
And all I had were dismembered bunnies jumbled in a plastic bag that I had to share with my three other brothers.
Next year was going to be different! My brother and I got up early and looked for bunnies in the neighbors yards before everybody else beat us to it. We did pretty good until Mr. Horlacher caught us and brought us home to our sleeping parents. Which resulted in no Kentucky Chocolate Bunny's for us that year.
It wasn't till next year, and then every year after for as long as I was a kid we again got dismembered bunnies.
I never new the pleasure and pain in breaking off the ear of a perfect rabbit. I would never know the guilt that was involved in eating a bunny lower and lower into it's beautiful boxed meadow till it was all gone. I would never know what it was like to cave in a perfectly egg shaped jeweled egg of chocolate. Nor would I ever know the experience of having a complete bunny that had a name and a home inside a beautiful box. And never would I experience the joy as a child to search for, and then eat chocolate found from under a bush. Okay,..there was this one time, but it wasn't chocolate!
Now I'm a grandparent of four kids under the age of eight. My wife this Easter has bought boxed bunnies, boxed eggs filled with tiny chocolates, toy racing cars and Barbie dolls to hide in the yard, (because just candies are not enough). The house is decorated with colorful paper, plastic, and tin eggs? Streamers in pastel colors draped across the ceiling. And then a center piece created from an Easter basket flowers and colored hay. I have to put on my Easter rabbit costume and directed the little darlings around the yard so that they can find their selected toy. Then the big family dinner after church which produces mountains of dirty dishes that are all done by hand. The noise, preparation, cleaning, cooking, and the incredibly hot rabbit suit fill the day from start to finish.
The house is now quite. The kids and grandkids have all gone home. And here I sit chomping on what's left of Hoppy the meadow bunny thinking Easter ends pretty much the way I remember it to be as a kid. Dad had it right I think. Kentucky Chocolate Bunny taste just as good as a boxed meadow bunny, and with a lot less work! Maybe next year I'll follow the example dad laid out for me.
"Alright Kids!" I would bellow as I take my pirate stance, one hand on hip, legs stretched apart and plastic bag held high filled with dismembered sweet, brown, creamy bunnies, "Who wants Kentucky Chocolate Bunny's?!"

Bob Niles