The Great Easter Bunny Trap

Milo Chen had a plan.

Not just any plan. This was a masterplan. The kind of plan that required three notebooks, two colored pencils (the red one was broken, but he made it work), and one very detailed drawing that folded out four times.

For six Easters in a row, Milo had woken up to find a basket full of chocolate eggs and jelly beans sitting on the kitchen table. And for six Easters in a row, he had missed the Easter Bunny by that much.

"This year," Milo announced to his little sister, Bea, who was sitting on the floor eating a cracker, "I'm going to catch him."

Bea looked up. "The Easter Bunny isn't real."

"You're FOUR. What do you know?"

"I know lots of things," said Bea. Then she put the cracker in her hair, which proved that she did not, in fact, know lots of things.

Milo unfolded his plan across the living room floor. It stretched from the couch all the way to the bookshelf.

"Step one," he said, pointing to a drawing of a carrot. "Bait."

Everyone knew the Easter Bunny couldn't resist a perfectly placed carrot. Milo would put one right in the middle of the kitchen floor, attached to a string, attached to a bucket, balanced on the edge of a chair. When the bunny grabbed the carrot — WHOMP — the bucket would drop right over him.

"Step two," Milo continued, pointing to a drawing of what appeared to be a spider web made of yarn. "Backup trap."

If the bucket missed — which it wouldn't, but Milo was a professional — the bunny would hop straight into a maze of yarn stretched between all four kitchen chair legs. It would get tangled up like a fly in a web.

"Step three." Milo tapped the last drawing proudly. It showed a rectangle with a small stick propping it up. "The classic."

A laundry basket, propped up with a wooden spoon, with a pile of jelly beans underneath. One tug of the string, and SLAM. Caught.

"Three traps," Milo said. "Nobody escapes three traps."

Bea clapped, even though she had cracker crumbs all over her face and almost certainly didn't understand the genius of what she was seeing.

The night before Easter, Milo got to work.

He took the biggest carrot from the fridge and tied a piece of kite string around it. He balanced a blue sand bucket on the edge of a kitchen chair, right above the carrot. He tested it twice. The bucket fell perfectly both times, landing with a satisfying clang on the tile floor.

Next came the yarn. Milo wrapped red yarn around and around the chair legs until the space under the kitchen table looked like a giant laser security system from a spy movie. He crawled through it once himself to make sure it was tricky enough. It was. It took him four minutes to get free, and he lost a sock.

Finally, he set up the laundry basket near the back door, propped up with Mom's long wooden spoon. He placed a trail of jelly beans leading underneath it and ran the pull-string alllll the way down the hall and into his bedroom, where he planned to wait. All. Night. Long.

"Milo, it's bedtime," Mom said from the doorway.

"I know. I'm in bed." He was in bed. He was also fully dressed, wearing his sneakers, and holding the end of a thirty-foot string.

Mom looked at the string. She looked at Milo. She decided not to ask.

"Goodnight, sweetheart."

"Goodnight, Mom. Tonight's the night."

Mom smiled in that way parents smile when they know something you don't, and closed the door.

Milo waited.

And waited.

He stared at the ceiling. He counted to one hundred. He counted backwards from one hundred. He made up a song called "Bunny, Bunny, Where Are You" that only had one verse because he ran out of rhymes for bunny after funny, honey, and money.

His eyes started to feel heavy around ten thirty.

No, he told himself. Stay awake. Stay focused. You are a bunny-catching machine.

At eleven fifteen, his eyes closed.

At eleven sixteen, they popped back open.

At eleven forty-five, they closed again.

At midnight, Milo Chen was snoring softly, the string still wrapped around his fingers.

He woke up to sunlight and the sound of Bea shrieking, "EASTER! EASTER! EASTER!" while running down the hallway like a tiny, cracker-powered tornado.

Milo sat up so fast he almost fell out of bed. He looked at his hand.

The string was still there.

He pulled it. It went tight, then — thwap — went loose. The trap had already been sprung.

"No, no, no, no, no," Milo whispered, and scrambled out of bed.

He raced down the hallway, slid around the corner in his sneakers, and burst into the kitchen.

The laundry basket was flat on the ground. Triggered. But there was nothing under it — just an empty floor and one lonely jelly bean that had rolled against the wall.

The yarn maze under the table? Completely untouched. Every single string still perfectly in place. Whatever had come through the kitchen had somehow passed right through it without disturbing a single thread.

And the bucket trap? Milo walked over and looked up at the chair.

The bucket was still balanced on the edge.

But the carrot was gone.

In its place, sitting right in the middle of the kitchen floor, was a small chocolate egg wrapped in golden foil, with a tiny note attached.

Milo picked it up. The note was written in loopy handwriting on paper so small he had to squint:

Nice try, Milo! The yarn maze was very impressive. See you next year.

— E.B.

P.S. — The carrot was delicious.

Milo stared at the note. He read it three times. Then he flipped it over to see if there was more. There wasn't.

He looked at the untouched yarn. He looked at the bucket, still balanced perfectly on the chair. He looked at the sprung laundry basket with nothing inside it.

"How?" he whispered.

In the living room, two Easter baskets sat on the coffee table, overflowing with chocolate eggs, jelly beans, marshmallow chicks, and little bags of gummy worms. Bea was already elbow-deep in hers, her face smeared with chocolate.

Milo sat down next to his basket. It was pretty amazing, actually. There were three kinds of chocolate, his favorite sour gummies, and a small stuffed bunny with floppy ears tucked in the back.

But Milo barely noticed any of it. He was still holding the note, turning it over and over in his hands.

Dad walked in with his coffee. "Morning, buddy. How'd the traps work out?"

"He got past all three of them, Dad. ALL THREE."

Dad raised his eyebrows. "Wow. That's one clever bunny."

"The yarn didn't even move. How does a bunny get past yarn? Bunnies have BIG feet! And he took the carrot without setting off the bucket! That's — that's not even physically possible!"

Dad sipped his coffee. "Maybe you need a different approach."

Milo looked up. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Dad said slowly, "you've been trying to catch the Easter Bunny. But has anyone ever caught him?"

"No," Milo admitted.

"So maybe instead of figuring out how to trap him... you figure out something else."

"Like what?"

Dad shrugged and wandered toward the kitchen. "That's up to you, buddy."

Milo thought about it all morning. He thought about it while eating chocolate. He thought about it while Bea put jelly beans in her shoes for no reason anyone could figure out. He thought about it while cleaning up thirty feet of kite string and a truly ridiculous amount of yarn.

And somewhere between untangling the last knot and eating his third marshmallow chick, an idea started to form.

That afternoon, Milo opened a fresh notebook. On the first page, he didn't draw a trap. He didn't draw a net or a cage or a bucket.

Instead, he drew a table. A tiny table, set with two tiny chairs. On the table, he drew a carrot on a plate, a cup of something warm, and a plate of cookies.

Underneath, in his best handwriting, he wrote:

Dear Easter Bunny,

I know I can't catch you. You're too fast and too smart. But next year, instead of a trap, I'm going to leave you dinner. If you want, you can sit and eat. I'll be in my room. I won't even peek.

But if you want to say hi, I'll be awake.

Your friend, Milo Chen, age 7 ¾

He folded the note carefully and tucked it inside the small stuffed bunny from his basket for safekeeping.

Three hundred and sixty-four days was a long time to wait.

But Milo had always been good at waiting.

Well.

Mostly good.