We have some slightly odd Easter traditions in my household. This year I made it a little weirder.

I grew up with the usual American Easter egg hunt, where everyone would dye eggs and then on the night before Easter my parents would hide eggs around the house so that I could hunt for them in the morning. There was also a basket of candy somewhere. We were a little constrained in the hiding due to having very food-motivated dogs, so everything had to be hidden above a certain height or behind closed doors. We also switched at some point to natural, food-safe dyes so that we weren't throwing out food, but otherwise it was pretty standard. I really loved the hunt.

Now that I have a kid, my spouse and I have a similar tradition. We've been using plastic eggs because none of us are all that enthusiastic about hard-boiled eggs—and with the plastic eggs you can put treats and toys inside! Alex has taken to sometimes making little origami as egg prizes.

But our kid was getting older, and the hunt was getting less challenging.

Some of the new tricks we used were pretty basic. Putting eggs in color-matched environments, or threading some string through the holes in the plastic egg's tip and suspending them in odd places.

Then last year, I came up with the idea of decoys. A lime hidden in a plant pot looks at a glance like a cleverly hidden green egg, but when you go to grab it you get a surprise. (This ends up making the Easter countdown a lot more confusing. "OK, how many are left?" "Well, I think there's one decoy remaining and two real eggs. Fake eggs. Real fake eggs?") But this year, she was expecting decoys. My spouse hid a potato, mandarin, kiwi, lemon, and tomato for additional variety, but I felt like we needed to up the game a bit.

And then two ideas crossed in my brain.

I grabbed a knife, a mandarin, a spoon, and some glue and got to work.

Grinning like a doofus, I hid the double-decoy in a plant pot where just a curve of bright orange would be visible. And it went off gloriously. In the morning, the kiddo eventually worked her way over to the pot. When she spotted the bright orange she knew it was a decoy... but after grabbing it a strange look spread over her face as she realized the orange was too light, and had a weird off-center weight, and rattled. She had a look of confusion and delight and "I don't even understand what's happening here".

Perfection.

But I don't think I'm going to be able to top this next year.