Vicious Brooklyn Squirrels Attempt to Sabotage Seasonal Festivities

A simple children's activity turned into carnage as Prospect Park squirrels eluded would-be Easter egg hiders. They acted surrepticiously, sneaking plastic, candy filled eggs up high into century-old trees. The cracking of plastic and the spitting of refuse accompanied a gentle shower of jelly beans and malted milk eggs. Chocolate proved to be the substance of their quest: the foil pastel seasonal Hershey's kisses were quickly consumed. No determination of why squirrels do not like jelly beans, even the gourmet ones, could be surmised.

It was year three of the annual child race for the candy with a somewhat diminished crowd due to the co-incidence of Jewish and Christian festivities. Last year a mob scene of around 50 kids made for mayhem and the abandonment of the traditional hard boiled egg scramble. This year 20 kids vied for over 200 eggs resulting in increased sugar satisfaction ratios. The brightest spot for me of the morning was a Dad who has done this for the third year in a row coming over the hill to hide eggs on this brisk morning. The hunt was supposed to be on Saturday, but had gotten moved to Friday due to inclement weather. I didn't think he could make it as like most of the employed, you hang onto your job with your finger nails, but he gallantly tossed his brief case and began harrassing squirrels with me.

I found a particularly stunning form of 16-to-the-dollar plastic eggs with a matte finish that included a true robbin egg blue color. Robbins were indeed bobbing along the grass, forsythia shouted their fluorescent yellow and the magnolias already started blooming. Not a bad celebration of the beginning of a brief but welcomed season.

P Diddy vs Gandhi

These recessionary times call for repeat visits to the library -- yes, that publicly financed institution that we remember from our childhoods and those pre-Wikipedia days. It's free. You get no backlog of books the kids never read. They have DVDs. They are entirely computerized so no satisfying stamp on each book, just a mundane beep from a scanner. They also catch up to your fines quicker. A book of mine got stuck in the kid book pile and I ended up paying more in fines on it than the paperback was worth. But, you can pay with your ATM. Who knew.

In my continual search to educate children about interesting things that do not have to do with contemporary media and plastic guitars, the biography section is my new haunt. I remember a surfeit of bios of all the dead white guys -- especially conquistadors. Well, the conquistadors have been replaced by tomes devoted to every possible Indian tribe and African American hero. I don't care to get into the PC or anti-PC movement -- remember when that was the hotbutton of talk radio rather that bonuses to bailout executives? Something did seem a little odd that there was one skinny paperback devoted to Gandhi and next to it was the official biography of Sean Puffy P Diddy Combs. I believe this man was once charged with accessory to murder when his bodyguard shot someone in a nightclub when he was still dating Jennifer Lopez -- but let's let bygones be bygones and celebrate his success as a fashion entrepreneur.

On the positive side, they do have more women represented than I remember, but mostly the usual suspects like Madame Curie and Amelia Earhart. I also managed to find a bio of Hilary Clinton that was written some time during the last election. There are a few problems explaining controversial figures to 6 year olds. What to do about the messy intern situation? Say that he was nearly thrown out of office due to an "office romance" but that she stood by her man.

Best recent library revelations: check out of An American in Paris. Never seen it, but should have. The kids thought the dancing was brilliant, they recognized the places in Paris as related to Madeleine books and the damn thing was so happy.

Believe it's possible to give up on all the crappy kid films and just show them great musicals. Next up: Guys and Dolls. Had trouble explaining what the Salvation Army is but they did recognize that Sinatra has a great voice. Girl child asked what "sexy" meant when I described Marlon Brando as such.