The Easter bunny is coming to town

Shhhh … don’t tell anyone, but there was a six-foot tall rabbit at Pine Valley in Cloquet on Tuesday morning.

Perhaps that bunny was figuring out exactly where to hide the eggs on Saturday morning … all 3,000 of them.

“I heard the radio station used to do an Easter Egg hunt, but I don’t think there’s been a hunt of this size in Cloquet before,” said Les Peterson, street and park supervisor for the city of Cloquet.

Peterson said the egg hunt came about almost by accident.

He’d gotten a postcard from a group that sells Easter eggs, which he kept because the rabbit on the card looked like a good model for Peterson’s annual hay-bale bunny, which sits at the corner of Highway 33 and Cloquet Avenue.

“Then I started looking at the postcard, which said the company hires handicapped people to fill the eggs, and I started thinking about how much fun I used to have going to the Easter egg hunt in St. Cloud every year when I was growing up,” Peterson said.

So he talked to the folks in the Cloquet Community Education office and at the Cloquet Area Chamber of Commerce. They liked the idea and were willing to organize. Then they talked to a few more people at various businesses around town and the Cloquet Egg Hunt was born.

The egg hunt will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday, right after the 7:30-10 a.m. pancake breakfast fundraiser for the Cloquet Skatepark at the Senior Center next to the hockey shelter. “Little kids” (ages 0-5) will hunt in one area, while older kids (6 to approximately 11) will hunt in a different area.

There will also be several golden eggs with slips of paper inside, telling the lucky child what prize he or she will get in exchange for the egg. Peterson said sponsors planned to buy a girls and boys bike for each age group.

The Easter Bunny will be there too.

Business sponsors for the egg hunt include Cloquet Ford Chrysler Center, Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, AGE to Age, USG and Woodland Insurance.

There is no cost to participate, but children should bring baskets, not bags, for their eggs.

Tags: carlton county, news, cloquet, entertainment