Easter’s multiple bunnies

Time for the bunnies. You know, “In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it...” etc, etc. I didn’t write that. Irving Berlin did, in 1933. It was used as the title song for the 1948 film “Easter Parade,” starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. Berlin was such an institution by then that even though the song was his one contribution to the film, it was billed as “Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade.” That was just fine with Judy Garland, who at the advanced age of 26, was still trying to get the public to see her as something, anything, other than Dorothy.

So what does any of that have to do with bunnies? Nothing that I can tell. But if it’s bunnies you’re after, go to South Coast Plaza. They got bunnies, lots of bunnies ? inert, animated and life-sized ? whichever you or the small people you look after prefer.

Let’s face it. When it comes to the holidays, nobody does it better than South Coast Plaza. This year, Carousel Court has been transformed once again into a spring garden that would make Beatrix Potter proud. Even the horses on the carousel have been swapped out for flower baskets and bunnies. But the star of the show is an interactive Easter Bunny ? a kid-sized, Disney-esque animatronic version ? operated and “voiced” by behind-the-scenes puppeteers, some of whom really do work for Disney. Kids can sit beside the high-tech hare on a garden bench and just, well, chat with him.

Everybody knows that kids say the darndest things, but South Coast Plaza’s animated Easter Bunny is no slouch and has some very snappy patter. For those who prefer their bunnies a bit more low-tech, there is another garden in the Crate & Barrel wing with a life-sized bunny in the traditional fuzzy bunny suit.

Most kids can’t get enough of the Easter Bunny, in whichever version, but there are the occasional second thoughts from a few of the youngest kids. Just like fully grown people, some kids are more adventurous than others.

In our case, our daughter would approach any character, anytime, anywhere ? Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, elves, leprechauns ? they were all fine with her. Our son was a little more cautious when something that was clearly not a real person started talking to him or patting him on the head. And circus clowns? No way, no how, get me out of here. I don’t know what he thought they were, but it was not good. Actually, I sided with him after I saw Stephen King’s “It.” Yikes.

Has there ever been a scary Easter Bunny? I don’t think so, unless you count one of the worst films ever made, “Night of the Lepus” with Janet Leigh and Stuart Whitman. “Night of the Lepus” is a 1972 “horror” film so unspeakably bad that it’s become a cult classic.

Janet Leigh and company are terrorized by a marauding band of mutant rabbits that have been exposed to radiation and somehow grown to the size of your average bus, which is big for a bunny. The mutant-rabbit-attack scenes were shot with real bunnies and optical effects to make them look huge. It didn’t work. The writers apparently forgot that whether they are normal size or 12-feet tall, rabbits are cute, and they don’t have a scary face.

The best scenes by far are the ones that juxtapose close-ups of the giant rabbits wiggling their noses with Janet Leigh screaming for her life, which she mastered in the shower at the Bates Motel of course.

But when it comes to Easter, where do all those bunnies come from? From other bunnies, obviously, but the rabbit was a symbol of fertility thousands of years before Christ.

The first depictions of “Easter” bunnies appeared in Germany in the 1500s, and the first edible E-bunnies were also German, first offered as a sweet pastry in the early 1800s. The German emigres who we mistakenly call the Pennsylvania Dutch brought the idea of a kid-friendly Easter bunny to this country. They called it “Oschter Haws,” which means “the oyster laughs.”

No it doesn’t. I made that up. It means “Easter rabbit.”

Pennsylvania Dutch children were taught that if they were good, the Oschter Haws would steal into their barn or garden and leave a nest of beautifully colored eggs behind. Boys would leave their caps and girls would leave their bonnets in a strategic place to entice the Easter Bunny to use them as a nest which, amazingly enough, he always did.

Today, 90 million chocolate bunnies, 5 million marshmallow chicks ? called Peeps ? and 16 billion jelly beans are produced for Easter each year, which raises an important question ? do you eat the ears on your chocolate bunnies first, or last? If you said ears first, congratulations. Seventy-six percent of Americans eat the ears first. How do they know that? I have no idea. Makes sense, though. I know I always started with the ears.

The bunny knows what he’s there for, you know what you’re there for, just get on with it.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest chocolate Easter egg ever made was the proud oval of the Belgian chocolate manufacturer Guylian. The equivalent of 50,000 bars of chocolate, the egg was 27-feet, 3-inches tall and weighed 4,299 pounds. That’s a big egg.

The world record for the biggest Easter egg hunt was set by Rockford, Ill., last year, with 292,000 eggs hidden, breaking Ontario’s 2004 record of 254,000 eggs. That’s Ontario, Canada, not California.

This year, Atlanta is trying to topple Rockford, with a 300,000-egg hunt at Stone Mountain Park. Shoot. I have an aunt in Rockford and cousins in Atlanta. Now I don’t know who to root for (and yes I know, it should be whom).

So that’s it then. The care and feeding of Easter bunnies ? animated, chocolated and radiated. Have fun, smell the flowers, ears first.

I gotta go.