
I am personally partial to chocolate Easter Bunnies -- especially the bunnies manufactured by the Palmer candy company. Those named Popper and Sunny, Lil' Hopper and Baby Binks I count among my favorites. These Easter treats are hollow and somewhat fragile and must be eaten with extreme care, especially when wolfing down one or two while driving out of the parking lot of Eckerd’s. It is here where I buy my Palmer bunnies by the dozens -- ostensibly for grand children, nieces, nephews and favored neighborhood children. One learns early that counter staff in drug stores are prone to judgmental expressions of disd
ain if they suspect adults of buying Easter candy for themselves. So, to avoid such negative profiling, I have learned to fabricate elaborate stories about treating neighborhood urchins to Easter goodies or giving young relatives generous Easter gifts. Of course, I have no nieces or nephews, I care naught for the neighborhood children and my grand children live 700 miles away. Nor would I ever consider sharing my chocolate bunnies with any of them, even if they lived next door. Let them get their own bunnies. After all, they're children. Someone is bound to buy them chocolate bunnies for Easter. Adults have to forage for these treats on their own.

Despite the fact that the quality of Palmer chocolate is anything but gourmet, the company nevertheless goes to remarkable lengths with the packaging and preserving of their hollow bunny treats. Not only have they found it necessary to wrap these confections of little or no know nutritional value in gaily colored foil, the visage of the characteristically demented holiday hare, complete with toothy smile and gaudy bow tie or ribbon, (depending on its sex), emblazoned on the shiny surface. But, (in all likelihood because these bunnies are hollow), Palmer has also decided, in order that the chocolate not get crushed beyond recognition before being eaten and therefore rendered unsellable, (as pulverized chocolate bunny parts do not seem that attractive to the average consumer), each bunny must also be carefully cradled by its ears and feet between several fiercely inviolable layers of festively colored cardboard, and then shrink-wrapped in remarkably impenetrable plastic. While this certainly makes wresting the confection fro

Because of the nature of the Palmer bunny wrapping method, accessing the confection while operating a moving vehicle is not advisable. This maneuver is analogous to dialing a mobile phone while driving one's vehicle on a California Interstate during rush hour. Trying to unwrap a Palmer bunny while driving should no doubt be a criminal offense, but I have found that it is virtually impossible to resist eating at least one bunny long before ever arriving home. Temptation is too great. Of course, the inevitable epic sugar rush is also a dangerous side-effect of flagrant bunny consumption, so caution is advised here as well. Amateur chocolate consumers are advised against mixing copious amounts of Easter confections with driving. I suggest finding a diabetic as designated driver.
Yet, to satisfy my felonious lust for a Palmer bunny or two while still remaining relatively safe in my moving vehicle I have devised what I have come to call the Palmer Method. (This is not to be confused with the original Palmer Method of penmanship, now sadly long abandoned, by which young children were taught to write legibly.) My Palmer method, by the way, also works while sitting in a revolving desk chair in front of a computer screen, or sneaking bits of bunny while on the run between classes, or surreptitiously consuming copious bunny parts before others discover chocolate is nearby. But the focus of this discussion remains on safely consuming while driving.
The most difficult part of the process, as I have previously suggested, is accessing the confection in the first place. Palmer does not make this easy for consumers, whether they are moving or remaining stationary. Extricating the foil-wrapped rabbit from its hermetic captivity is much like successfully negotiating a breech birth. It takes a gentle and patient hand to release the bunny from the confines of its cardboard bondage without damaging an ear or caving in a rib. While maintaining the integrity of the bunny is not necessarily requisite to its enjoyment, if one is to avoid losing any fragment or shard of chocolate while driving distractedly, one should endeavor to keep the bunny's body intact as long as physically possible. One should especially strive for this while driving as it is difficult to fish for lost crumbs of chocolate from beneath one's bucket seat or from between one's legs while still maintaining reasonable control of the car and avoiding being gawked at by fellow drivers, as others on the road are wont to draw unusual and often lewd conclusions if they see a driver's hand frequently disappearing into his lap, regardless the reason.
The first thing one mu

With the plastic punctured, it is relatively easy to remove and can be done so if one is even remotely good at driving with one hand. The other hand can thus be employed to

With the plastic wrap now gone, it is time to extract the bunny from its cardboard host. This can also be done with one hand. Slight pressure against the cardboard, right where it grips the bunny's ears, will generally free the candy coney from bondage. Care, however, should be taken to apply pressure to the cardboard rather than the ears of the bunny itself. While the ears are the most substantial part of the entire chocolate body, they can still nevertheless be broken. And while the foil cover keeps the ears from disappearing onto the floorboards should this happen, one must consider that, immediately upon unwrapping the foil, the brok

With the bunny now safely removed intact from the cardboard, the final process of removing the foil begins. There are two schools

Finally, while there are any number of individual approaches to finally enjoying one's chocolate bunny, there are two generally accepted techniques used to consume the coveted prized confection: the anterior method and the posterior method. The anterior method was alluded to earlier. In this method, one eats the ears first. One can consume the entire ear mass in one bite or one can carefully


Chocolate Easter bunnies are a joy to eat and certainly, to me, the most festive part of the whole Easter season. While others enjoy jelly beans and creme eggs as they ponder the season of death and rebirth, I prefer resurrecting hollow Palmer bunnies from the

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