At a time when nightly news reports are regularly riddled with Amber Alerts, a few weeks ago there was a different kind of emergency search undertaken. Unbeknownst to islanders, a children’s icon — Mr. Easter Bunny — went missing.

Apparently, Mr. Bunny disappeared in the morning hours of March 15 after telling his wife, Honey Bunny, he was despondent over the countless hours he spent each year getting ready for the holiday.

“He’d been fretting over the brilliant blues, just-right reds, perfect pinks and gorgeous green eggs needed in time for the Easter baskets,” said Shelley Blackburn, a concerned citizen.

Bunny was one very disgruntled worker — he was agitated over the Easter issue, asking, “Why is it the responsibility of the Bunny family when we don’t even lay eggs?”

“It’s a perfectly good question,” Julie Wiggins said.

But don’t worry, kids, Bunny’s back at home. In fact, he never went missing — he was just wandering around in the imaginations of a group of Oak Harbor women.

Those women — Shelley Blackburn, Julie Wiggins and Jeanie Little — shared many laughs and boosted their friendship while writing their version of the not-so widely wondered question: “What would happen if the Easter Bunny disappeared?”

“Things like this are what I love about the island,” Little said. “You turn on the news and it’s just all drama — but you need to have a little fun in your life.”

Blackburn got the idea for writing the Easter Bunny’s adventure while on her regular volunteer duties at a local elementary school.

One day a ceramic bunny was moved, rumors ensued over its location and everyone wondered what all the bunny pandemonium was about.

“I thought it was funny that there was all this uproar over this missing bunny,” she said. “Then I thought ‘what if…’”

Immediately, Blackburn’s mind was spinning with images of the Easter Bunny’s time off. She decided to do a take-off of a Foster Farm chicken commercial of the birds road tripping.

In her story she talks about Bunny being overworked and simply wanting to spend time with his ever-expanding family.

The story chronicles reports of sightings of Bunny around town — including a sighting at Safeway with a cart full of frozen pizzas, chips and two-liter sodas, and dressing incognito to buy sunglasses, sunscreen, shorts and tank tops at Wal-Mart.

Honey Bunny suspected he was running off to Mexico to go deep sea fishing, according to Blackburn, whose story confirms Honey’s beliefs when Easter Bunny is spotted buying fishing gear at Big 5 Sporting Goods.

Blackburn enlisted her friend Jeanie Little to edit the stories.

“I’m the innocent one who often gets led astray,” Little said.

Julie Wiggins illustrated the tall ear-eared bunny tales with photos.

“I was in the middle of weeding the flower bed at the Legion when I was unknowingly recruited,” Wiggins said.

After three weeks on the loose, Bunny came hopping back home. He’s readjusting to home, and thanks to help from the entire bunny family, is ready to hop to his Easter deliveries. Dr. Lenord Tortoise, reportedly, is a therapist who’s trying to get Bunny’s feelings about the holiday back on track.

The gals admit they’re enjoying having fun with the stories.

Coyly, Blackburn leans in and says, “I talked to Easter Bunny and Honey Bunny myself after he disappeared, that’s how I got all the details.”

“I did, I really did,” she laughs playfully.

Blackburn has already planned writing stories for the Fourth of July and Christmas.

“It’ll be the Little Firecracker that Could,” she said.

She figures, why not, and her friends are just chalking it up to good fun.

Wiggins — a 30-year resident of Whidbey — said the story of E. Bunny getting lost isn’t that far fetched.

“Easter Bunny is going to get lost one of these days,” she said. “All the landmarks like Kow Corner have been torn down and he won’t know his way around.”

She said she can still remember a time when the population sign outside Oak Harbor read around 4,000.

“So few people were born here or arriving at the time that someone would actually go out and handpaint a new number,” she said.

Wiggins said Easter has always been a major holiday production in her family.

“Growing up it always meant getting dressed up, coloring eggs, having an egg hunt and a big meal with Easter ham and fruit salad,” Wiggins said. “Oh, and photo opportunities with us in our Easter outfits.”

When she became a mother she established the same Easter routine.

“Everyone gets up early and comes down stairs to see if the Easter bunny left them a basket,” she said. “Then later on we color the eggs and hide them.”

Even to this day, Wiggins creates Easter baskets for her children — even when they are 18 to 27 years old.

“Sometimes we think, ‘should we color eggs and hide them this year’ but then we always end up missing it and doing it anyway,” she said.

The tables turn every once in a while and the kids hide the eggs for the parents to find. And every year there always seems to be one thing that holds true.

“Notoriously there’s always one egg the kids can’t find but the parents say is out there,” Wiggins said. “Then three months later you find it by accidentally stepping on it and everyone runs. By that point it’s so rotten.”

Blackburn’s mother always liked making Easter memorable.

“She’d tie a string to the foot of my bed and at the end would be my Easter basket,” she said. “It would wind all through and around my house — it always took a while for me to find it, but it was so much fun.”

Jeanie Little still has one Easter memory vivid in her mind. It was the first year the holiday took a true, special meaning in her heart.

She was just 14, and it was her first Easter living with her father and step-mother in California.

“Back then gunny sack dresses were so popular and I wanted one so bad but we couldn’t afford it,” she said.

Little had been having a rough time adjusting to her new home. But that morning her step-mother won her over.

“I woke up and there was my Easter basket with a pink and violet gunny sack dress in it that my step-mom made,” she said. “It was all so special, there was tights, makeup and even a little candy.”

The dress remains a keepsake today.

Even though Blackburn now has three grown children and five grandchildren scattered around the country, she continues to make Easter baskets.

“I made them, packed them and shipped them all out earlier this week,” she said. “I have to be ready, after all, Easter Bunny can use all the help he can get.”