Norfolk Bunny Hunt

By Dave Beers

Photos by Dave Beers

This past Easter weekend (April 10-12) there was a bunny hunt in Norfolk. Residences and businesses set up Easter holiday displays both inside and outside as part of a town-wide socially-distant scavenger hunt for all ages. Over 60 addresses were listed on both a check-off list and an associated map of locations throughout town.

On Saturday my family jumped into the car and hit the road to find the more far-flung locations. My wife drove, my daughter checked them off the list and I was the navigator/photographer. On Sunday we did the same on foot for all the in-town locations. We had a blast, and, like many, we took pictures to share our finds on social media. I personally enjoyed seeing some houses and streets that I never took notice of before.

As a participating address, we also enjoyed seeing the many hunters stopping at our house to look and take pictures. Invariably, the children would get excited as soon as they spotted the somewhat-hidden bunny in our window. At our house, I noticed that about half of the participants were families with young children and the other half were adults of all ages.

While many did not have an actual Easter bunny, everyone was able to cobble together some sort of Easter-themed display. Many of the displays were amazingly creative in both content and location and arrangement. Some were purposely hidden to make it a challenge to find, while others were definitely not hidden. Houses with long driveways put their displays alongside the road, and houses closer to the road put their displays in windows (first and second story), and on porches, lawns, lawn furniture, trees, shrubbery, mailboxes and roofs. Content included artwork, sculpture, colored eggs, poster board creations, hand-crafted wooden displays, plants, flowers, balloons, inflatables, statuary, many stuffed animals and, of course, a few Easter bunnies. My personal favorite was a sandwich board that exclaimed, “Rabbit! Rabbit!”

Ann DeCerbo created, organized and promoted this event with social media and emails. She said, “My family, with the help of my neighbors, has hosted a very large egg hunt since my daughter Ginny was born. Since social distancing meant that we wouldn’t be able to hold it this year. We wanted to come up with another way to keep the tradition and the fun going.”

Her efforts paid off, and the whole town benefited.