#2 Easter Story – How I Ruined Easter, by Carrots Boo

Rabbits can’t keep a secret. The news travelled fast. No chocolate. All gone.

I was in charge of the chocolate. It was my fault. I ruined Easter.

By the time I got to school the next morning, it was all anyone could talk about.

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in bunny jail?” said Goldie, a know-it-all chick who sits in the front row.

“Least you could have shared some of the chocolate,” teased my friend Hopson. “Before eating all of it yourself!”

Even the teacher, Ms. Blossom, brought it up.

“Let’s come up with a hypothesis for what happened to the chocolate,” she said.

A hypo-what? I thought. What is that?

“A hypothesis is a theory – an idea – that we use to explain something. It can help us figure out what happened,” said Ms. Blossom. “Tell us, Carrots, when was the last time you saw the chocolate in the sculptor’s warehouse.”

My nose started to quiver. Did I have to go over this again?

I had already told my mom, dad and the Easter Bunny Investigative Squad (EBIS) the answer to this question, but I shared it with the class too. I accepted a large crate of chocolate last week, from Switzerland, and loaded into the already very full warehouse. I marked the delivery in a notebook, as I always do, and let Mom and the Easter Bunny know that we were fully stocked for carving season, which is supposed to be now. Only problem is – there’s nothing to carve.

“So you last saw the chocolate in the warehouse about a week ago?” Mrs. Blossom repeated my words, “that means that between last week and last night, somebody entered the laboratory, and stole an entire Easter’s worth of chocolate without anyone seeing a thing. Class, let’s come up with some ideas for what could have happened. Let’s start with you, Carrots, what do you think could have happened?”

“Ummmm,” I said, “Maybe thousands of sugar ants discovered the chocolate and carried it off, bit by bit, until it was all gone.”

“That’s one idea.” she said and added it to the chalkboard. “What about you Hopson? Any thoughts?”

“I think the Moai ate it,” he said. The class started giggling.

“The Maoai?” said Ms. Blossom. Hopson was referring to the large stone statues that surround our island. They were carved by ancient humans who lived here hundreds of years ago.

“They are the only ones big enough to be able to eat that much chocolate,” said Hopson. “And besides, they are angry.”

The Hopson family burrow was between two Moai statues and he spent most of his time hopping around them, or perched on top, as a look-out. Hopson’s dad worked with my mom as a chocolate carver. One Easter, he even sculpted some mini Moai for Easter baskets, before being told to stick to bunnies and eggs. Let’s just say that for Hopson and his dad, the Maoi were family.

“How can statues be angry?” asked Ms Blossom.

“You’ll see,” said Hopson – and with that, he hopped out of the classroom.

“Oh dear,” said Ms. Blossom, “Looks like it’s already time for us to head to the emergency meeting – how we’re all going to delivery Easter without any chocolate.”

Everyone left school and headed toward the meeting cliffs. I could tell this day wasn’t going to get any better.

I knew in that moment that I just couldn’t look my Mom, Dad and great grandfather in the face. I decided it was time to do some detective work and solve the mystery of the missing chocolate on my own. I hopped back to my mom’s workshop and the chocolate storage building to look for clues.

Read Part 3: A Clue and a Scare