With malls closed, the Easter Bunny finds a way

Every spring, they plant their cotton-tailed behinds on pastel thrones and rule American shopping malls with their furry paws, delighting and occasionally terrifying children.

Just days before the Easter Bunny was set to make his annual debut, though, the global coronavirus pandemic dealt him a rotten egg. Malls across the country are closed and won’t reopen before Easter. Bunny suits lie empty everywhere, their permanent smiles stuck in utility closets.

The secular, chocolatey side of Easter seemed to be canceled.

But like perennial daffodils rising up in a vacant lot, some Easter bunnies have found a way around quarantine life. That’s why Bernadette Shallow, 30, of Cinnaminson, was dressed as “EB," her nickname for the bunny, as she waved her hands at an iPhone on a side porch of her home Thursday afternoon. The song “Here comes Peter Cottontail” was playing on a Bluetooth speaker. On the other end of EB’s FaceTime call, two kids in Cherry Hill named Joey and Jack were smiling and waving back.

“It’s such a strange time, and we as adults don’t even understand it,” Shallow said. “To be able to give them that little bit of joy in a two- to three-minute FaceTime conversation is really cool.”

Shallow is charging $10 for the calls but doing it free at the daycare for children with medical needs, where she works.

“Every day, I keep getting more and more emails about it,” she said. “I think next week is going to get really busy.”

The Easter Bunny was scheduled to appear at Cherry Hill Mall from March 14 to April 11, along with special guest appearances by Batman and Mulan, a Disney character. He never made it. A mall spokesperson said the bunny was contracted through a company called Cherry Hill Programs, which offers “experiential photography” with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny at 900 venues, some in Canada and Puerto Rico.

A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on how many bunnies were out of work, and the owners of several area malls, including King of Prussia and Deptford, did not return requests for comment. Probably few, if any, Easter displays were able to open, as the season for bunny photos is generally shorter than Santa’s.

While the Easter photo tradition likely began with the birth of the shopping mall in the mid-20th century, the bunny’s role in the Christian holiday might have been brought to America from Germany via the Pennsylvania Dutch. A 2013 article posted on the Free Library of Philadelphia’s website said the Oschter Haws, or Easter hare, laid eggs in the grass for good children to find.

With more than 100,000 indoor shopping malls in the country, that could mean a lot of unemployed bunnies, like Debbie DeSantis. She’s 40, a mother of two who worked as an Easter bunny in a mall in Delaware. She was holed up with her family in Ocean City, N.J., this week, but she’s put her personal bunny suit to use with her Easter Bunny’s Burrow Facebook page. She’s also doing videos for children. It’s free, but she’ll accept tips.

“Even though the bunny isn’t the reason for the season, it’s what kids expect,” she said.

Being a mall bunny is no hop in the park, DeSantis said. She’s an active rabbit, dancing and singing if she has to. The suit, she said, can feel like a furnace after a few hours. She wears an ice vest beneath the fur, to keep her cool.

“It can be a great way to lose weight,” she said.

While DeSantis tries to read kids’ emotions before they get plopped on her lap, she said the Easter Bunny still elicits far more tears and fear than Santa.

“It’s because they can’t physically see the face,” she said. “You’re talking like a five- or six-foot bunny that can’t move their face or even blink.”

Shallow added blue construction paper to her bunny’s eyes to make them less “creepy.” She works full-time at Weisman Children’s Rehabilitation Hospital’s pediatric day-care center in Pennsauken and also sings in an acoustic duo with her brother. She works as a waitress, too. She bought the bunny suit about five years ago for Magical Memories, a party planning business, where she dressed up as different characters to entertain children.

"It’s just been sitting in the basement, in a box,” she said.

Shallow has revived the business during the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this week, she dressed as Ariel from The Little Mermaid and did a virtual visit for a girl’s 16th birthday party.

In Gloucester County, stay-at-home orders hurt Michelle McMahon’s photography business for the spring, including many in-studio Easter portraits. She bought a bunny suit in January and saw a number of Facebook posts from moms lamenting a bunny-less Easter — and she had an idea.

“I’m just riding in my husband’s truck wearing the bunny costume,” McMahon, 30, said Thursday. “With the bunny, the kids have to stay on their property, and I don’t leave the truck."

First, McMahon was just driving around her own neighborhood in Deptford, but soon, parents began asking her to visit their neighborhoods, too. Her schedule for the next week is like a long-distance trucker’s.

McMahon is also working on something called the Front Porch Project, taking portraits of families on their porches from a safe distance. She’s accepting donations for Food4Staff, a nonprofit that’s helping to feed hospital workers. She brings a zoom lens.

“I’m just trying to get everyone’s mind off of everything else going around us,” she said. “Even if it’s five minutes, we need some normalcy."