HUNTING THE EGGS

Last weekend, 603 children packed Capaha Park to embark on the adventure of hunting down 3500 hidden Easter Eggs.

Each plastic egg held a special candy prize inside.

Chris Eastridge, recreation programmer, said that this year was the most successful hunt in the nine years of the Capaha Park Easter Egg Hunts.

The eggs were hidden all over the park from the lagoon to the baseball field and by the basketball court.

Three different age groups went out with nothing in their baskets and came back with 3,500 eggs collectively.

But how long has this tradition of hunting eggs been around?

Candy Heise, a reference associate at the Cape Girardeau Public Library, said that the tradition came about in the 15th Century in Western Europe.

According to German legend, a mother had little to give her children on Easter due to a famine in the country that year.

She had some eggs and she decided to color them and hide them in a nest for her children to find the next day.

When the children found the eggs they had spooked a large white rabbit that was sitting on them, Heise said.

And so the legend of the Easter Bunny and the tradition of hiding eggs grew from there to the commercial and cultural venture it is today.