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The Easter Bunny broke into our house the other night and left a pink, blue and green Easter tree in our living room.

The tree is about 2 feet high and decorated with bunnies, Easter eggs, carrots and other cute critters.

My first thought when I saw the thing was, "What the hell is that doing here?" I must have also said those words out loud as well because my wife, Madeline, got kind of defensive suddenly.

"That's an Easter Tree," she said, explaining the meaning of all the cute things hanging from the tree's pastel limbs. "The Easter Bunny must have brought it."

While my wife may have thought the idea of a furry marauder sneaking into our house in the middle of the night, skulking around while we lay sleeping was cute, the image brought shivers to my spine.

You see, I do not have the same warm and cuddly childhood memories of the Easter Bunny as most people. Mine are quite horrifying.

The Easter Bunny monster

When I was a kid, the Easter Bunny was just a mythical creature that most kids believed would bring them chocolate candy and eggs on Easter. Except in my house.

When I was 5 years old, I naively asked my older brother, Stan, how the Easter Bunny came into being. My brother told me that the Easter Bunny was created as the result of an unauthorized government experiment with atomic radiation that changed the molecular structure of a common rabbit so that it grew to gigantic proportions, was able to fly and breathe fire.

"You know, just like Godzilla," he said, passing on this bit of wisdom to his little brother.

Attack of the bunny monster

Ever since that day, I have lived in fear of the Easter Bunny.

Weeks before Easter, I would imagine a 60-foot-tall Easter Bunny coming to attack our little town, trampling its homes and street cars under furry rabbit feet while lobbing 8-foot Easter eggs like mortar shells at our municipal buildings.

I would have nightmares where I'd wake up from a deep sleep and there would be this giant pink eye peaking in through my bedroom window at me.

My brother didn't help. Before bed, Stan would terrorize me with stories of giant bloody bunny tracks being found in the field beside our house. He also told me how someone's pet collie was discovered encased in a 5-foot-high pile of bunny droppings.

Then, to make matters worse, a Hollywood horror movie came out called Night of the Lapin in which civilization is attacked by giant mutated bunnies who munch on unwary humans. My brother took me to see it and told me it was a documentary.

He once had a friend show up at our house with the sleeve of a bloody shirt ripped off and his arm missing. The two of them told me a giant rabbit had bit his arm off. I didn't even catch on when his friend grew his arm back the next day. My brother just said the arm growing back was a result of the atomic poisoning in the rabbit's blood.

Easter parade of horror

And why shouldn't I believe my brother about the Easter Bunny? He's the same person who warned me about vampires, werewolves and zombies that lived in our neighborhood.

I lived in terror at the expected coming of the Easter Bunny. I couldn't understand why other children where so happily looking forward to his annual visit.

My fear was so great, I once passed out when my parents took me to an Easter parade and a giant bunny balloon appeared from around the corner. I avoided Easter egg hunts in those days like the plague, imagining the wanton devastation a berserk 60-foot Easter Bunny could reek on innocent children lured to an open field in the quest of Easter eggs.

There was a way to protect yourself. My brother told me that the way to stop an Easter Bunny attack was to hang crucifixes made out of blessed palms in my widows and walk backward for seven days. So, while other kids were out frolicking in the sun the week before Easter, I spent my childhood warding off giant Easter Bunny attacks by braiding crosses and tripping over things I couldn't see because I was walking backward.

I guess I had forgotten these things over the years, blanked them out from my conscious mind until I saw the Easter Bunny tree sitting in my living room. All of the terror of my youth came flooding back to me as I began inching away from the Bunny Tree.

"What's wrong?" my wife asked. "Don't you like it?"

"No, it's fine,'' I said, walking out of the room backward while looking over my shoulder. "I just have to go braid some crosses now."

- Myron Kukla

Myron Kukla is a Midwest writer based in Holland, Michigan, Tulip capital of the world. He is the author of several books of humor including Guide to Surviving Life: A 3,487-step Guide to Self-Improvement and Confessions of a Baby Boomer available at www.squareup.com/store/myronkuklabooks. Email him at myronkuklabooks.com.