An Easter Story

I'd love to gather Easter stories from around the world. My friend, Ruth Nef-W�rmli lives in Switzerland. Ruth was kind enough to send in our first Easter story. Ruth told me that, as we call people who are not brave "chickens", in Switzerland they call them bunnies.

The Clumsy Easter Bunny

In a clear area in the forest, the Easter Bunnies were busy colouring the Easter eggs for all the children. Hoppel, our bunny, loved to do this job very much, but, while working, he got sometimes so confused with the colours and the brush that he ended up with having a yellow ear, a red nose, a green and a blue foot and a white tail. The other Easter bunnies started to tease Hoppel by calling him 'Red Nose', or 'Yellow Ear' or 'Green Foot' and they were always laughing about him.

All the teasing did not make things better, and at the end of a long day, Hoppel accidentally knocked a colour pot over his table. Now this made the other pots fall off the table. The colours spread onto the grass, the moss and the flowers of the forest. The eggs rolled off the table and fell onto the coloured ground. Hoppel was stunned.

After a long minute, Hoppel very carefully picked one egg up and looked at it. And there was a big, wonderful surprise! The flowers and the grass had laid themselves around the egg when it fell down, and now this egg was even more beautiful than all the ones Hoppel had painted. It had a lovely rainbow colour and it showed also the flowers, moss and grass as a very special design. He picked up the next egg, and this one was even more beautiful than the first one!

Hoppel started to pick up all the eggs. He put them now very carefully aside to dry. He was very happy. Not one egg looked like another, but they all were surely very special.

The next morning it was the Easter, and it was the Easter bunnies' duty to fill all the little hidden nests in the forest with the Easter eggs. Hoppel hid his eggs like the other Easter bunnies, but, instead of leaving the place, he hid in an old hollow tree trunk to see what would happen when the children came. And what happened when the first child found a nest with one of Hoppel's eggs?

The little child was so happy to have found these beautiful eggs that they danced around. The other children came along to see what had happened, and now seeing these eggs, they all wanted to have Hoppel's eggs. Every time they found such a nest, there was a loud "aaahhh" and "ooohhhh" to be heard.

The other bunnies could hear the noise and could not understand what was going on. But there was Hoppel in his hiding place, softly laughing.

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