The poor thing clearly has some sort of condition. One that made his entire body break out into tiny pink donuts. Or those little pink and yellow gummy rings, very seasonal, and probably pretty tasty, but if you’re covered with them, you might want to see a specialist.

In the last scene of the  movie adaptation of the Life and Times of the Easter Bunny, EB turns into little sparks and drifts away after bequeathing his massive cosmic powers upon his successor. This is like 30 seconds before then, when it looks like he has a really bad case of magical mange.

The Easter…it hurts. Just…put me out of my seasonal misery :(

Some people have pets. Some people kind of look like their pets.

Some people build an alternative lifestyle around their pets.

Both bunny and little girl have the best stunned expressions on their face.

Girl: “I’m plunging forward into adulthood. Perhaps I can hold it off for just one more day–polka dots and cartoony accessories keep old age at bay, maturity can be warded off by pink skirts and doily collars and cuddly stuffed animals. I shall take my last stand today, in my time of greatest power, Easter! Youth should burn and rave at closing of the day!”

Bunny: “Why am I tied to this kid? Why? This bow’s like a tourniquet here! Oh god, she’s lurching forward, I’m gonna hurl–”

Enough bunnies. Have a duck.

Have a brave duck, a duck that knows where it stands on the issues.

Really, what’s more outrageous than a mallard?

Crusty sparklebunny from Goodwill in Round Rock, Girl with Bunny Ears from Savers in South Austin, Outrageous Duck from Goodwill near Anderson Mill on 183, Austin

Basically just pile on the Easter until visibility is totally destroyed, and call it “crafts.” Lots of sins are committed in the name of crafts. This is not a great atrocity against tulle, but it has a certain mysterious allure to it. Dare you pull aside the veil of flowers and see what Easter horrors lurk behind?

I wonder…is it even possible to fit another rose on there? There’s probably some legal limit, some critical mass after which the project collapses in on itself in a puff of satin, from which nothing but “peeps” can escape (because nothing, not even a collapsar, will eat a peep…)

For the record, when you shove aside like five pounds of flowers, chintz, and fiber optics, this is the payout. Honestly, I felt a little cheated. Unless I wanted to reenact the horse-head scene from “Godfather” with a bunny.

Have you ever noticed how some people start to look like their pets after a while? Even when their pets are, like, ovals?

Eventually, all matter becomes vaguely oval. The descent into a basic vaguely spherical oblong cannot be avoided. At least that’s what I tell myself when the “Middle Age” truck drives through the neighborhood playing its merry tune.

Fight it, bunny! Fight the curse of the spheres!

I have nothing to say about this picture. Except that bunnies fart flowers and dragonflies.

Vaguely easter baket from Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, vaguely eggy bunny from Goodwill near Anderson Mill and Burnet, embarrassing, reclining bunny from Goodwill on Parmer near I35, Austin

Cher has absolutely nothing, nothing at all, on this rabbit.

Because no bunny has ever been graced with amazing, Lady Godiva-esque flowing tresses like THIS bunny. And not only that, she’s got mascara like you wouldn’t believe, and I think I’m even seeing some eyeshadow.

It’s like she’s a one-rabbit cosmetics testing center. Awesome.

There are some that are of the opinion that rabbits shouldn’t wear eyeshadow and blush and four-yard-long wigs. They are of the opinion that such vanities make a lady rabbit look, well, whorish. If not outright horrifying.

Oh little bunny, judge not, lest ye be judged.

Goodwill on 183 near Anderson Mill, Austin

Wake the troops and sound the bunny drums!

Look  into those eyes. Those…empty eyes. Bunny lives to drum. In fact, bunny has been drumming for two days straight, and occasionally, bunny drums at 3:00 AM. For this is what bunny’s life has become. One endless drum solo.

boom. boom. boom. boom. boom. boom. boom. boom.

On the plus side, he won’t be suffering long, because while everyone’s child is a unique and precious snowflake…

rabbits are nothing if not replaceable.

The ironic problem: what to do if your entire body is a buffet of delightful veggies? It’s the “Homer Simpson/Forbidden Doughnut” dilemma. The Greek Gods did this sort of thing, usually to punish hubris. Like, turning someone into a spider for saying they could weave and spin better than the gods.

I’m not sure what a bunny could possibly do to deserve this. They’re not, generally, very prideful, and not prone to blaspheming, as far as I know.

And yet the gods have seen fit to transform one into radishes, leeks and corn. The gods, basically are sadistic jerks.

“Let’s see how long he can go without  eating his feet. Oooh, one of his friends found him! This is going to be HILARIOUS, trust me!”

“Ooh! Next, turn a dog into porkchops and have it rain barbecue sauce!”

“Booyah!”

“At least…at least the foxes probably won’t eat me. They’ll just lick the butter off.”

Drum-Bunny from Goodwill and Parmer, corn-bunny from Goodwill near Anderson Mill and 183, Austin

Someone needs to call an exterminator. Their shoehouse is filled with rabbits.

Rabbits, or mice. I’m not sure which. The ears say rabbit. The body and thin whiplike tail says “mouse.” The hooked clawlike hands really say “gargoyle,” or maybe “Nosferatu.”

Theory one: balancing an Easter egg on the point of his nose. Theory two: Nasal cyst. Do note the doughlike foreleg. This is clearly some sort of extruded, quick-rise life form. The unbaked “Pillsbury Doughboy” of the rabbit set. Yum.

Good lord, it’s got bunnies coming and going. Ever since they installed a pet door on their size 175 extra wide, they can’t keep the vermin out. They act like they practically own the place.

Do lips normally roam freely about the body? I didn’t think so. And yet, definitive proof, if of course you take “painted on the back of a ceramic boot” as anatomical canon. Shoe bunnies have detachable mouths that can drift around their faces and land somewhere below their chins. I assume this is going into a child’s room of some sort–or was supposed to, I note that it actually went to Goodwill. I hope they weren’t planning on being a veterinarian when they grow up.

Goodwill on I35 and 290 near Walmart, Austin

Sooo…this was meant to be for Good Friday for maximum inappropriateness. But I got swept away in the frenzy of carrots. Mea culpa.

Bunnies–they pretty much symbolize innocence, right? If you ignore the “making more bunnies” angle, which, rest assured, the bunnies do not–they’re cute, they wiggle their noses, rarely pirate DVDs, seldom run for office.

So it’s sad when you catch them sacrificing their own in some sort of disturbing mountain-top ritual. But it happens. Apparently.

Call it context, maybe contrast, but those bunnies in the background really don’t look like nice characters. They’ve got those scary zombie eyes you get in certain kinds of ceramics, and coats that would do a lion proud. But mostly, they’ve somehow rammed a wick into a stunted, malformed smaller rabbit and have started rendering him. This, I think, makes them Not Nice Bunnies.

The poor thing :( Did you know it would end like this, little lumpbunny? Wick through your heart, vital fluids oozing down a cliff, as larger lagomorphs cavort fiendishly behind you? Of course, you are a weird fetal blob, like some reject from a Dr. Who casting call.

As the creamy nougat center of the rabbit slowly set in the west, we left the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with a sense of bittersweet insouciance, knowing next year we’d return to Alberta, but would probably leave our cameras at home next time.

Salvation Army on 183 near Metric, Austin

Carrots. Just … just give ‘em here. Really. I’ll stop any time I want to, no worries. Just three or four more. Six, tops. Maybe eight. Seriously, though, it’s not like it’s a thing, I just like carrots. I’m not hurting anybody or nothing, I just…look, buddy, just give me a bag of Bird’s Eye frozen nibblets and we can both get out of here, okay? I need the…I need the eyesight.

Oh, the fevered expression of a carrot junky. He’s double-fisting the things now. Look at those huge bloodstained eyes, the orange teeth…there’s probably a 12-step program for this.

Tragic. He’s already lining up his next hit.

Parents, take some time out this Easter to have a talk with your children about members of the Umbelliferae family. One conversation tonight can save five, even as much as ten, dollars at the grocery store.

Hey, it’s a cheap high.

Of course, the real question is who’s helping the neighborhood lops and chaudries get all these carrots? They’re a controlled substance, after all. Or at least it’s a pain for them to reach the counter at the grocery store, it’s a little high.

Sadly, many medical “professionals” are pushing root vegetables now, using their licenses to acquire prescription-grade carrots and passing them on to the youth. You can’t trust anyone. It’s “healthy,” they said.

Bunny Crack from the Goodwill on I35 and 183, Dr. Wiggly from The Goodwill near Anderson Mill and 183, Austin.

I love how terrified infants look exactly like a walk-on cameo from Alfred Hitchcock’s House of the Young. Particularly if Hitchcock dressed in an adorable little pink number with a high Empire waist. No-one can look shocked, indeed fatally affronted, like a 60-year-old Southern woman or a baby. Or Hitchcock…but.

But something is obviously terrifying this little girl. What is it? What could possibly so disturb an infant that she won’t sit still for an “adorable baby” photo besides, of course, loud noises, soft noises, sudden shifts in the Dow-Jones index, the photographer, or Wednesdays?

Holy shit. It’s Easter.

For the love of god, little girl! Wiggle! Wiggle like you’ve never wiggled before! Easter’s cresting the pillow and there’s murder–or chocolate eggs–in its eyes!

I actually walked right by this until my partner said “you know, you missed the Easter bunny about to eat a little girl in the art bin.” And, yeah, there she was, and there Easter was. Frankly, I feel this way about any major holiday. Thanksgiving, in particular, likes to wait until you’re in a state of false security before leaping–”You thought I was celebrated on the weekend, didn’t you?!?”

So parents: keep your children away from stealthy rainbow bunnies this Easter–or you’ll be paying for therapy 15 years later.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

…And then the Easter Bunny’s head exploded. Boom!

Sometimes you can get a clear view into the mind of the artist. Like with Devilbunny, The artist presumably really hated kids, and wanted to give them heart attacks. I don’t know what this artist was hoping to achieve. It looks a little like an abstract exercise in target shooting.

I hope that, whatever happened, it made a really great noise.

Maybe those aren’t cartoony detonations. Maybe they’re whiskers. In which case, the rabbit was probably in a better place with the explosions. Now it’s living its life in a state of blind confusion, unable to see past its nose, stumbling around behind a bad case of catastrophic whisker failure. If there’s one small grace, it’s that it’s got a clever decoy on its butt.

I think that Easter is 20% more festive with the regular sound of a bunny bumping into walls. Keep looking, bunny! The eggs are right in front of you!

Goodwill on Brodie in South Austin

And I would give it to him. Absolutely, in a heartbeat, if it would keep him as far away from me as possible.

The Goodwill “Blue Hanger” outlet store actually isn’t my favorite haunt, because honestly, “broken” isn’t the same as “funny,” and anything that isn’t soft and pliable isn’t going to survive long in the customer-ravaged binyard that is the Hanger. So I set my sights low, and were they ever exceeded by…this guy.

He’s six feet tall. He’s plywood. He’s DEFINITELY home-made. And he’s coming to your house for Easter.

Hippety…hoppety.

The only other critter I know with arms like that is a Tyrannosaurus, and frankly, I’d rather hug the giant lizard. I’m more comfortable with a known evil. Not this weirdly-proportioned monstrosity. It’s like a blasphemous hybrid of rabbit, street mime, and Butterball frozen turkey. At least it’s probably quiet.

Actually, that’s not at all comforting, I’d really rather know where it is. And what it wants.

For the record: Devilbunny is held together with pain. There are screws in his head and neck. Do there need to be screws in his head and neck? No. He’s plywood. They’re just there to tear flesh. Every part of him that isn’t a screw is covered with splinters. It’s like an affectionate saguaro. And the worst part is, he doesn’t even have a basket of Easter treats. No, he’s come for yours. And you better give him some. Or just throw him the neighbor’s three-year-old and run, run as if your life depended on it, which it might.

And keep telling yourself, I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny. I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny. I don—

Blue Hanger on Burleson near Highway 71, Austin