Hoppy hunting

GEORGE — The official count was 133 children at the George Easter egg hunt Saturday morning, but it looked like twice that many, possibly because they were so excited they couldn’t stay in one place. The weather had been nasty the day before, but Saturday the sun was shining and the wind was negligible. The Georgettes, the local women’s service organization that organized the event, had a stand set up with coffee and doughnuts for the adults.

The lawn outside the George Community Hall was scattered with about 1,000 eggs, according to Georgette Jeannie Kiehn, one of the organizers.

Unlike some other local Easter egg hunts, the Georgettes send the kids out on the field in shifts, starting with the ones under 2 and moving up to the 10- to 12-year-olds. Parents like that arrangement better, said Marylou Krautscheid, another Georgette.

“If they’ve got several kids, they can watch each kid find eggs,” Krautscheid said.

Nobody is really sure how long the Georgettes have been putting on an Easter egg hunt, but it’s been a long time.

“I moved here in ’82, and they were doing it then,” Krautscheid said.

The tradition goes back further, but organizers weren’t sure how much further.

“I was doing it in ’81,” said Kiehn. “We were the young mamas.”

The Georgettes dyed and planted real eggs up until 2000, Krautscheid said. They offered prizes for a while, but that didn’t work out, so now they stick with plastic candy-filled eggs. A prize that the young egg hunters seem to want more than the prize items of the past.

“Yeah, so we quit doing that and we serve doughnuts and coffee now, for the adults, while they're watching the kids,” said Kiehn.

The field outside the George Community Hall was divided up for different age groups. The under-twos had a flat space in front of the door, while the older kids started from the top of the slope on the west side of the building. Adults formed a perimeter to make sure the children didn’t wander into the wrong area. Each child was allowed to find a certain number of eggs: six for toddlers, eight or nine for older hunters.

Occasionally new rules would be thrown in just to make it more challenging – and more entertaining for the spectators. The 5- and 6-year-olds had to jump on one foot while hunting eggs, and the 7- to 9-year-old girls ran backward while the boys bunny-hopped.

“Who’s faster, boys or girls?” asked volunteer Sam Krautscheid as a group of young egg-seekers waited eagerly for the start signal. The boys may not have been faster, but they proclaimed their swiftness louder.

“OK, then we’re going to give the girls a head start,” Sam Krautscheid said, at which several of the boys appeared to regret being so vocal. They managed to hold their own at egg-finding nonetheless.

Jacque Rasmussen had brought her children to the hunt since 1991, she said, and now she’s there with her grandchildren, two of whom were Blakely Gayle Van Dyke, 2, and Cora Rasmussen, 6. Both girls were decked out in spring colors, Cora sporting a pair of daisy-shaped deely-boppers on her head.

“The Georgettes are wonderful,” Jacque Rasmussen said, adding that she was thinking of joining them.

“This is great for the whole family to bring their kids to.”

Joel Martin can be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.