Art of Alzheimer's-Easter Edition

It may be a little early for Easter, but I wanted to tell the story while the Aunt Teeter post was still relatively recent.

Every Easter, we would have a huge Easter egg hunt at Great Aunt Teeter's place. Mom and her sister, Mary Anne, would hide eggs all over the farm. They would always forget where they hid them, so eventually they learned to make a list. Back in those days, they hid dyed hard boiled eggs, not the plastic eggs of today. So if we didn't find one, the raccoons enjoyed a little breakfast.

Fast forward twenty years or so. My older sister carried on the tradition for everybody when her kids were young. She hid plastic eggs filled with candy, or balloons or little toys. Her kids are now all grown and have children of their own, but she is still hosting the Easter Egg hunt for all and sundry. There are usually 20 to 30 people there, all participate in the hunt, not just the kids. She spends days filling hundreds of plastic eggs. She also has little contests with prizes, like, the person with the most pink eggs wins a toothbrush or whatever. She doesn't make a list of where she hid them, however. (Do you sense the foreshadowing?)

We always open the eggs into a bag so we can leave the plastic eggs for next year. One year, I was dutifully opening an egg, and out came some foul, brown liquid, and a little package. It was an egg from the year before! The little package was the remnants of the tiny Snicker's bar in the egg. This little monster was my consolation prize for finding an egg from the year before.

One year, I hosted the Easter Egg hunt. She supplied the filled eggs, I just had to hide them before everybody came. I was up at 6 am hiding eggs. It was really windy that day though. I kept looking out the window and seeing little eggs rolling by. Oops!

That year was also a good one for garter snakes. The one field was covered with hundreds of tiny snakes. I still hid eggs there, and warned everybody not to step on my baby snakes! My brother, the trickster, caught a little one, and managed to put it in one of the large (like, ostrich sized) eggs. My nephew (17-18 at the time) walked up, and my brother handed it to him very nonchalantly. So we stood there chatting for a while, the rest of us eyeing the egg because we knew what was in it. Finally my brother told him to open it, just to see what was in that big egg. My poor nephew jumped about a mile high and screamed like a girl, while the rest of us held our sides from laughing so hard. (No snakes were harmed in the making of that practical joke.)

Now five generations later, we still celebrate the Easter Egg hunt started at Great Aunt Teeter's farm.