Parsnip's First Egg Route

Central Burrow Dispatch was never busier than the week before Easter. Baskets were stacked to the ceiling, ribbons were being curled, and somewhere a very old rabbit was counting eggs out loud and refusing to be interrupted. In the middle of it all stood Parsnip, the newest bunny in the Easter Bunny Logistics Division, with her ears up and a brand new satchel on her back.

"Trainee Parsnip," said a voice behind her. It belonged to Mrs Hazel Thistlewick, the senior route supervisor, who had delivered eggs for four hundred and twelve Easters and wore a whistle round her neck that she never, ever blew. "Whistles wake people," she said, when Parsnip asked. "Tonight is your first training run. Follow me."

Practice Lane was a row of five pretend houses behind Central Burrow, with real gardens, real flowerpots and real gravel paths. The practice eggs were wooden, painted with stripes and spots.

"Rule One," said Mrs Thistlewick. "Hop on the grass. Never on the gravel." Parsnip nodded hard, hopped forward with enormous enthusiasm and landed right in the middle of the path. CRUNCH.

"Gravel," said Mrs Thistlewick, "is no friend to a quiet bunny." Parsnip tiptoed back onto the lawn with her ears flat.

"Rule Two. Hide every egg below the height of a five-year-old's nose." Parsnip looked around, hopped onto the water butt, scrambled onto the shed and set a spotty egg in the very middle of the roof. She slid back down, very pleased. "Nobody will ever find that one," she said.

"Exactly," said Mrs Thistlewick. "Who is meant to find it? A pigeon?" Parsnip climbed back up and fetched it down again.

"Rule Three. Always leave one Starter Egg where it can be seen from the back door. A hunt needs a beginning." Parsnip set a bright yellow egg on the doorstep by the boot scraper, where it glowed like a buttercup. Mrs Thistlewick made a small mark in her notebook that might have been a tick.

Rule Four was counting. Every egg had to be written on the delivery manifest and counted twice, once going in and once coming out. Parsnip hid the rest of the eggs in a flowerpot, under the bench, behind the watering can and inside an old boot. Then she counted them all again. "Twenty," she said.

"Twenty," agreed Mrs Thistlewick, and her whiskers twitched in a way that, in a younger rabbit, might have been a smile.

They practised every night that week. Parsnip learned to land on the grass without looking. She learned that teapots make excellent hiding places and birdbaths do not. She learned to hop so softly that even a sleeping cat only twitched one ear.

On Easter Eve, Mrs Thistlewick handed her a satchel of real eggs and a real manifest. "Number 4, Cherry Tree Close, on your own," she said. "I shall be in the hedge."

Number 4 had a gravel path, a lawn full of daisies and a small round dog asleep in the window. Parsnip looked at the gravel, and then at the dog. She hopped onto the grass and stayed on it all the way round, and the dog did not even open one eye. She hid twelve eggs, every one of them below the height of a five-year-old's nose, and left the Starter Egg on the back step, where it would be seen first thing.

Then she counted. "Twelve going in," she whispered, and checked the garden once more. "Twelve coming out." She wrote it on the manifest in her neatest writing and signed it with a small paw print. From the hedge came a soft rustle, and Mrs Thistlewick stepped out and pressed a rubber stamp onto Parsnip's training card: Route Licence, Fully Qualified.

In the morning, at Number 4, a little girl in spotty pyjamas opened the back door and saw a yellow egg glowing on the step. "It's started," she said, and it had.

But Parsnip did not see that, because by then she was curled up in her burrow under Central Burrow Dispatch, with her empty satchel on its peg and her training card propped up beside her bed. Her paws were tired from a whole night of soft hopping, and her ears had flopped all the way down.

Somewhere above her, Mrs Thistlewick was walking slowly home along the hedgerows, with her whistle round her neck, still not blowing it. And Parsnip, Fully Qualified, breathed slow and deep, and slept until the afternoon.