The Eggs That Were Hidden Too Well

Marigold was the best egg hider in the whole Easter Bunny Logistics Division. She once hid an egg so well inside a daffodil that the daffodil did not know about it until June. Every spring, at the Hiding Trials in the meadow behind Central Burrow Dispatch, she won the Golden Basket, and this year she meant to win it again.

The rules were simple. Each bunny had ten chocolate eggs and one hour to hide them. Then the judges, three elderly rabbits with clipboards, had one hour to find them. Marigold put on her straw hat, rubbed her paws together and hopped off into the long grass.

An hour later, the judges went out to search. They looked under stones and behind dandelions. They looked in the hollow log, in the old bucket and in the clover patch where the bees were. They did not find a single egg.

"Ten out of ten," said the head judge, sounding very impressed, and handed Marigold the Golden Basket. Everybody clapped. "Now, please collect your eggs," said the judge, "so that we can all have tea."

Marigold hopped back into the meadow. She looked under the stones and behind the dandelions. She stood in the long grass with her ears turning slowly round, like two windmills. Then she hopped back to the judges with her paws empty. "I've hidden them so well," she said, "that I can't find them either."

There is a form for this, of course. It is called Form EB-12, Report of Eggs Hidden Too Well, and the Logistics Division keeps a whole drawer of them, mostly for Marigold. She sat on a tree stump and filled it in. For each egg, it asked what the egg looked like and, most importantly, what she had been thinking at the time.

The report went down to the Lost Egg Desk, and up came Officer Digby Mole. Digby could not see very far, but he could smell chocolate through a closed door. He held the report so close to his nose that it tickled. "Egg number one, gold foil," he read. "Thinking at the time: nobody ever looks under a flowerpot that is under another flowerpot."

Digby shuffled to the stack of flowerpots by the gate. He lifted the top one, and then the one beneath it, and there sat a gold egg, looking very pleased with itself. "Egg number four, blue with white stars," read Digby. "Thinking at the time: clouds." Everybody looked up at the sky.

But Digby sniffed, turned slowly round, and walked over to a large sheep who was dozing by the fence. He reached deep into her woolly coat and brought out a blue egg with white stars. The sheep did not even wake up.

It went on like that all afternoon. Egg number six was green, and Marigold had been thinking green on green, so it was lying in the grass, invisible until Digby's nose found it. Egg number eight was in the old bucket, under an upside-down sun hat, underneath a sleepy frog, who apologised.

Then there was egg number ten. "Pink, with a yellow ribbon," read Digby. "Thinking at the time..." He held the paper closer. "It just says, I was thinking about lunch." Marigold's ears drooped.

Digby sniffed the air to the left. He sniffed the air to the right. Then he sniffed, very slowly, in the direction of Marigold's straw hat.

Marigold lifted her hat. There, sitting on top of her head between her ears, was a pink egg with a yellow ribbon. "I put it there to keep it safe," she said, "while I had my sandwich." The head judge laughed so much that his clipboard fell over, and even the sheep woke up.

That evening, Central Burrow Dispatch added a new rule to the Hiding Trials. Every bunny must now draw a little map of where they hide their eggs. The rule was pinned to the noticeboard, and underneath, in smaller letters, someone had written: Especially Marigold.

Marigold went home to her burrow with the Golden Basket on her arm and all ten eggs inside it, counted twice. She hung her straw hat on its hook. Then she lifted it off again, checked inside, and hung it back up, just to be sure.

She curled up in her soft bed of hay with the basket beside her. Outside, the meadow was dark, and the sheep was asleep again by the fence. Marigold's nose twitched once, then twice, and then it was still. And every single egg was exactly where it was supposed to be.