Hunting For Bunnies, Finding A Lot Of Fun

By Shannon Hicks

While rain ruined plans for a second day of Bunny Watch Hayrides, a fundraiser to benefit a Newtown Middle School Odyssey of the Mind team, the event offered at Fairfield Hills on April 22 was nevertheless a success.

By late Friday morning two antique tractors were chugging away, hay was being spread across a third wagon to carry children of all ages, and dozens of bunnies had been hidden, waiting to be counted in the woods in the southeastern area of the Fairfield Hills core campus. Meanwhile, parents were photographing their children standing behind oversize Easter cutouts, others were watching as their children had their faces painted, and still others were encouraging their children as they decorated plastic eggs with stickers and foam cutouts.

Parents and students on a Newtown Middle School Odyssey of the Mind team were fundraising at Fairfield Hills with an event they were calling Bunny Watch Hayrides. All seven members of The Rudy Roundup Team — Erica Bloomberg, Sydney Chiarito, Jacob Emmerthal, Catherine Menousek, Ryan Rogers, Zachary Wieland, and Michael Ziluck — were involved with the planning and presentation of the special event, which took place under the pavilion and adjacent area near Glander Field. Also helping during the event were fellow NMS Odyssey coach Trish McDonald and some of her Odyssey students, as well as NHS coach Dawn Gray and some of her students.

The hayrides and various additional activities ran for five hours, with the day’s proceeds earmarked to help the students cover their expenses for next month’s national competition in Maryland.

The sun kept trying to stay out for more than just a few minutes Friday morning and early afternoon. For those who ventured out to the pavilion and area near Glander Field, it didn’t matter that the skies were overcast. What mattered was getting onto one of the trailers behind a tractor, heading into the woods, and counting up the hidden bunnies.

“This is fantastic. What a great idea,” Yola Ammerman said, while her three children were busy next to her, pointing excitedly and counting bunnies while on one of the tractor rides.

“This is absolutely wonderful,” Ryan Maurer agreed, his daughter Mikayla sitting on his lap equally happy to point out rabbits. “They have obviously put a lot of work into this. We will have to thank them.”

Mikayla, meanwhile, was putting dozens of notches on her tally card. She was occasionally hesitant, however.

“That one looks like a child,” she said of a bunny decoration that had been set up to look like a bunny playing Hide & Seek, its head facing a tree trunk and its arms placed to look like it was covering its eye and counting. “I don’t know about that one. Should I count it?”

Parents and other bunny watchers around her all encouraged her to count the questionable hare, and before she could put too much thought into it another bunny was spotted.

“Oh there’s one. Look dad!” she said, her hand rushing to scribble another notch on her yellow card.

Three Farmall tractors were taking turns pulling wagons over trails usually populated by joggers and walkers. Two of the wagons had been outfitted with benches, while the third was a flat trailer that had been covered with hay. The plan for the event was to have a pair of wagons covering the trails, but Molly, Jana, and Rob Emmerthal, from Silverman’s Farm in Easton, had fortunately brought along a third tractor on Friday.

“We had two tractors running, but we called on the third because we had so many people show up,” said Dawn Gray, an Odyssey coach at Newtown High School who was volunteering for the fundraiser.

There were plenty of additional activities for everyone, including face painting, decorating plastic eggs, racing with eggs (either balanced on a spoon or being pushed along with a stick), and a beanbag toss. Attendees showed up steadily at Fairfield Hills, Mrs Ziluck reported.

“We had people right up until 4 o’clock, when we were starting to pack everything up. We gave them a hayride at least,” she said.

Admission was $5 per person, which covered all of the activities. Refreshments were available for an additional fee, and parent Jennifer Rogers was also selling gladiola bulbs and handmade earrings, also to benefit the effort.

The Rudy Roundup team is one of three — 20 students total — from the middle school that will compete next month at the Odyssey finals, May 27–30 at the University of Maryland at College Park.

A fourth team from the middle school, seven teams from Reed Intermediate School, and one team from Newtown High School also competed during the state tournament in March. Two of the intermediate school teams and the high school team all finished in third place in their respective divisions.

Bunny Watch Hayrides were originally scheduled to return to Fairfield Hills on April 23, but downpours Saturday morning prevented that from happening.

“We didn’t even try to set up,” Mrs Ziluck said. “It was just teeming, which was such a disappointment. We had calls from people in Brewster, and Cheshire, who were all planning on coming out.”

Nevertheless, Mrs Ziluck was more than happy with what the students and fellow parents had pulled together.

“It was spectacular. The kids had so much fun, and the parents [who brought their children to the event] kept telling us what a great event it was,” Mrs Ziluck said this week. “Just like Odyssey, the students needed to own the event, and to be responsible for something like this was wonderful for them. This kind of event is indicative of what Odyssey kids do.”

Regardless of whether the team makes it back to nationals next year (“We’d like to be, of course,” Mrs Ziluck said), residents can look forward to the return of Bunny Watch Hayrides in 2012.

“Absolutely,” said Mrs Ziluck. “We will do fundraising for the community, if not for ourselves. It was just too great to not do this again.

“It was so much fun for us too.”

More Fundraising

To raise the $531 per student cost of attending the World Finals, teams will also continue their fundraising efforts, including setting up booths at the fourth Newtown Earth Day Festival, taking place Saturday, April 30, from 10 am to 4 pm, at Newtown Middle School.

Students will be offering raffle tickets for handmade wizard wands, theme baskets and a 54-inch stuffed teddy bear. The drawing for those items, “and a few surprises,” said Mrs Ziluck, will be Friday, May 6, at Edmond Town Hall.

In addition, a friend of the Emmerthal family has donated a 5-foot-tall bear sculpture, carved with a chainsaw, which will be raffled off. The bear will make his public debut during this weekend’s Earth Day Festival, and a drawing will be held on Sunday, May 22, at 4 pm, at Edmond Town Hall.

Dawn Gray’s Odyssey team, called Kooky Odyssey, also continues to offer Friend Flocking to raise funds for their trip to Maryland (see related photo and information on this page). For a $25 donation, a group of lawn ornaments — colorful, hand painted cardboard birds designed by the coach and students — will be placed on the front lawn of a home or business under cover of darkness, where they remain for 24 hours. The team will return the following evening to collect the birds, and help them migrate to their place next scheduled location.

For $50, donors can request a location for the flock as well as purchase “insurance” that the flock does not return to their lawn. Donors can also purchase one of the birds for a $100 donation.

Contact Dawn Gray at 203-219-7350 or MomGray3@gmail.com for information or to arrange to “Flock A Friend.”

To view a slideshow of photos from the April 22 Bunny Watch Hayride, visit NewtownBee.com and look for this story under the Features tab.