On being the Easter bunny.

Over the past few weeks in my PR class, we have been planning and promoting an event called Glow in the Park: a glow-in-the-dark Easter egg hunt for high school aged kids, featuring carnival games, a blowdart arena, a DJ, and of course a massive Easter egg hunt after it got dark. As part of this event, we had to recruit sponsors, plan all the games, and work with the city to pull it off. Originally, I was part of the sponsorship team, which meant I just had to go talk to a bunch of businesses and ask for money/coupons/pizza.

One day, the city representatives came to our class with a huge box. Out of the box they pulled two things: a gorilla costume and a bunny costume. "We want you guys to be in charge of the mascots," they said. "Who wants to be on the mascot team?" asked my professor. No one volunteered. Suddenly my hand was in the air and I was on the mascot team (along with a few other hesitant classmates).

A few days later, I got a phone call. "Hey Shannon, are you on campus?" I was. "Can you come to the comm office? We need help with some promotion stuff." Sure. I showed up to find a few of my fellow PR students and a girl already dressed as a gorilla. (Why there was a gorilla involved, I still don't know.) "Will you put on the bunny costume? We just need to take a few pictures so we can promote the event on Instagram." Next thing I knew, I was walking all over campus as the Easter bunny during lunchtime: chasing the gorilla outside the student center, arm wrestling in the rotunda, and sunbathing on the quad. Kids were excited, Snapchats were flying, and my cheeks were turning more red than a pomegranate (mostly from how hot that costume was).

The second time I was recruited to wear the bunny costume was a few days later, when the mascots were set to make appearances at a few of the local businesses as a way to promote the event. This entailed another walk across campus, a car ride, and traipsing up and down Main Street as people stared. We tried on clothes, took pictures, and made a few children cry (whether from excitement or fright, it's still a toss up). An hour later I was dripping sweat and when someone gave me a bottle of water on the way back to the school, I had to ask her to open it because I couldn't hold anything with my bunny paws.

Luckily, I was not involved in the bunny's third appearance: the two high schools in Cedar City. However, the night of the event came, and guess who was the adorable mascot? You got it - yours truly.

I came prepared this time. For the heat of the fluffy costume, I wore a work out tank top and shorts. Because of how big the costume was, I tied a pillow around my stomach and brought safety pins to help hold the back together. I brought rubber bands to help hold the huge gloves on. I put my hair in a bun, pinned it back with a headband for good measure, and I was off: Shannon, the Easter Bunny for the next hour and a half.

At first, it was easy. Kids wanted to take pictures with me, moms were pumped, the pizza and bird mascots from Pizza Hut were excited (?), and everyone wanted to hug me. But then, Emily (my "handler" - they need a more demeaning term) told me I was going to be in a a dance-off with the gorilla. A what? *NSYNC started blasting from the DJ's speakers and then there I was, trying to dance in a mascot costume. If you have ever seen me dance, you know that all my moves are in my hips, which is not easy to portray when you have a pillow strapped to your tummy under rolls of fake fur. I did my best but the gorilla definitely won that competition. Talk to Colby for the video.

Next up was my trip through the blowdart arena, but this time, no one told me what to do. I was on my own in the inflatable maze, so I stole some girl's gun but considering they were blowguns (emphasis on the "blow") (lol), I couldn't do anything with it through that bunny head, so I gave it back and just took some of the darts to throw at people. However, as I already mentioned, the mittens were huge and I could barely hold the darts. When I tried to throw them, they went straight to the ground. The struggle is real, people.

I followed the gorilla over to the carnival games where he did the ring toss and I tried to swat down all the rings (due to my jealousy that the gorilla could actually hold and throw objects). I did the bottle toss through and knocked down a few bottles. I'll take my wins where I can get them.

Finally, it was time for the egg hunt. I followed Emily onto the playground where she had me sit in a swing and hold an egg as all the kids ran through to look for over 2000 eggs that we hid earlier in the day. It was dark by then and I couldn't see anything other than silhouettes and flashing lights through the mesh eyes of the costume. I felt pretty helpless: huge feet making me walk super slow and carefully, no use of my hands, and barely any sight. When the egg hunt was over we went back to the pavilion and I held up a sign for one of the high schools so they could return their empty eggs. One kid walked by and made fun of me so I chased him and tried to steal his candy (heh heh).

Then, it was all over and the bunny head finally came off. Luckily, since the whole thing was at night this time, I wasn't too hot. My debut as the Easter bunny was successful and actually way fun, despite my limited mobility.

However, the story doesn't end there. Until this Easter, I had no idea that people thought the Easter bunny was creepy. But then I saw this Buzzfeed article. Apparently, Easter bunnies all over the world are literally terrifying and more frequently cause tears of sadness in children than tears of joy. Luckily, my bunny costume was adorable... or was it? Note the comments in the following picture:

I was shocked! How could a cute and cuddly bunny be "soooo creepy?" But then another comment followed, this time from my own mother.

How rude. I refused to be brought down by the haters. I was an adorable Easter bunny and that was the end of it. (Although I did think the comments were funny.) And then, today on Instagram, I saw this:

So yeah. That's all.