First responders bring Easter Bunny to town
Alecia Matthews heard the sirens Saturday and ran with her parents to look out the window.
The daughter of Sarah Moyer and Brian Matthews, both of Exeter Township, Alecia, 7, expected to see a police car or fire engine and was surprised to see those and more.
“It was the Easter Bunny,” she said. “First there was a firetruck and then the Easter Bunny sitting on the back of a trailer.”
Alecia watched as a parade of emergency vehicles escorted the enthroned cottontail down her street.
“The bunny waved and I waved back,” she said, noting that she felt a little scared at first because “some mascot costumes can be creepy.”
The rabbit’s round of township neighborhoods was a first-time event coordinated by members of the Exeter Township Police Officers Association and Exeter Township Fire Department.
“This happened superfast,” Officer Craig Downs said. “It was a last-minute thing.”
When members of the officers association learned the township’s annual egg hunt was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Downs said, they wanted to do something special for the community. So they reached out to the fire department.
The two departments have been collaborating for decades to bring Santa Claus to the township each fall, he said, and the idea was to do something similar for the spring holiday. In less than a week’s time, volunteers from both departments had a plan for the bunny tour in place.
The initial plan for a two-evening tour was scrapped due to Sunday’s rain forecast, and the bunny covered the routes planned for Saturday and Sunday in one day.
“There was a lot of cooperation to bring this together,” Downs said.
Police Chief Wendell B. Morris authorized the use of police department vehicles, and the officers donated their time, Downs said.
The township’s streets and recreation departments also helped make the bunny parade possible.
“Move over Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny is coming to town,” the officers association posted on social media.
Upstairs in the family’s Exeter home, Alecia’s grandmother Vickie Moyer also heard sirens and asked what was going on.
When told it was the Easter bunny, Vickie thought she was being teased.
Santa Claus and sirens, sure. But the Easter Bunny? she wondered.
Waiting outside for the big man in red with her late husband, Scott, their daughter, Sarah, and sons Steven, 22, and Sam, 18, was a family tradition.
Their excitement and fun at the annual event was rekindled when Alecia came along.
Vickie and Scott took their brood to the township annual egg hunts, too, she said, another tradition the family continued with Alecia.
They were disappointed but understanding when the coronavirus forced the egg hunt’s cancellation for the second year in a row.
“This was a great alternative,” Vicky said of the bunny run.