Monday, March 24, 2008

It's Been An Orgy Around Here...


...a freakin' chocolate Easter bunny orgy. Here is the post-mortem on our bunnies:


This is Lucy and her very large chocolate bunny, which she had been begging to have since she saw it on the shelf at Duane Reade in like January, which is when they start putting out the Easter candy anyway:

Lucy holds the box up to the the window so she can get a good look at the bright orange of the candy carrot in the bunny’s hand and she turns the box this way and that way to look at every nuance of the bunny. She likes the carrot a lot and we have an in-depth conversation about how orange the orange is, how tiny the carrot is and whether or not the bunny has eaten any of the carrot because it looks to Lucy like there aren't any bite marks and if there aren't any bite marks he couldn't have eaten any, unless of course he was sucking on the carrot, which seems to us unlikely. This takes like 7 minutes to sort out the carrot thing.

Then, she carefully starts to undo the box and when it looks like the box might rip, she asks me to help her remove the bunny, who she has named Peter for Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit and then, we take the bunny out and she holds it for a minute and makes the bunny run across the floor, shrieking, "No! No! You can't catch me!" and when I ask her what she's doing she tells me she is pretending to be Peter Rabbit running away from Mr. McGregor's garden and I think this is all quite imaginative, but I wonder aloud whether she might want to actually EAT the chocolate bunny because I'm thinking she might want to share a bit with her mother who, by the way, was in labor with her for like 37 hours and most of that was hellish, unrelenting pain and I felt she, well, owed me a freakin' piece or two of her bunny.

But this suggestion rankles her. She informs me, with the horrified look of someone who has been asked to eat a dear friend, that this is exactly what happened to Peter - the unfortunate soul ended up playing a leading role in Mrs. McGregor's prize-winning pie. And so, scared that I might try to maim her rabbit when her back is turned, Lucy promptly puts Peter back in the box, closes the lid, spends 10 minutes securing the lid with sticky tape and forbids me to get near the bunny.

She puts the box in the fridge and spends the rest of the morning painting pictures, but doing it right next to the fridge, in case we decide to try something funny with Peter. Clearly, our 3 year old doesn't trust us around chocolate. God help me when I try to get juice from the fridge and the eyes of death were unleashed upon me.

As of this writing, the bunny is still there - silent, cold, clutching his carrot.


This is Edie, who in an attempt to prove that siblings can be quite different from each other, can barely waste a second getting the box open and shoveling big slabs of chocolate into her mouth.

Edie and David are quietly huddled in a corner of the living room, breaking off the bunny ears, cracking open the ass, biting off the legs. The box is in tatters and discarded on the floor. There is no sound, just the eerie silence of a bunny meeting his end bit by bit. These two spend no time ogling the orange carrot or pondering its existence. There is no back story, no desire to know this bunny's life. They don't bother giving the bunny a name, that just gets in the way of the carnage, makes it more painful to rip the bunny limb from limb and digest him. These two are pros.

I look over at Edie. A large bunny tail is hanging out of her mouth. David is wiping the chocolate off his lips with the back of his hand. Edie has smears of chocolate all over her cheeks and some of it is running down her chin. She could care less. There is a point where I suspect they no longer realize Lucy and I are in the room. The two of them communicate with each other in grunts and they have a secret, unspoken cadence between them. Edie hands David the bunny. David tears small pieces off for Edie and hands them to her. She shovels them in her mouth. David grabs whats left. Later, he'll tell me he was eating the bunny to keep Edie from eating it all.

Yes. Yes. He is the suffering hero.

After some time, the bunny is down to one single chunk. David senses they are near the end. He is the male lion leaving the zebra carcass to the rest of the pride and the vultures. He goes to take a shower. He goes to wash himself clean of the carnage. This is untenable to Edie. She is not finished. She grabs the chunk of bunny and heads into the bathroom after him. She finds him in the shower. She wraps on the door. No, really, she knocks on the glass until he opens it. He's soaking wet. She silently holds up the bunny to him.

He knows what she wants. They are cut from the same cloth.

He breaks the big chunk into a handful of smaller chunks and lays them in her palm, careful not to drop any. She takes them, sits right in front of the shower (so as not to waste any time walking back into the living room) and finishes the last of the bunny.

No traces of Edie's bunny have been found by anyone.

xxxooo YM

4 comments:

  1. This is a scream, Kim. I don't think that Max has quite realized that his chocolate bunny is either chocolate, representational of any kind of an animal he might feel an affinity towards, or something he should (or shouldn't) be eating. He just gazes fondly at the box, while Dan and I wish he's just open the thing, so we could finish it after he goes to bed at night.

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  2. Such a vivid picture you paint, likening the chocolate bunny eating to a jungle scene. Did you ever manage to steal a bite of Lucy's? Admit it, you probably bought an extra one for yourself, no?

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  3. Your writing makes me laugh every time - and ALMOST - but not quite - want to adopt kids.

    You also feature fab recipes that I cook for my friends here in Manhattan.

    Thanks!

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  4. God, I love you guys...Thanks for the nice words.

    To Molly - grab the damn box when he's not looking and keep it in the freezer for safe keeping.

    To Izzy's Mama - Of course, we have an extra one...in the freezer.

    To Anonymous - Love you and everything you said and wish you would un-veil yourself so I could kiss you full on the lips....just kidding.

    And go for the adopted kid thing...the worst that can happen is you'll have great material for a BLOG!!!!!

    Kim

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