Australia is retiring the Easter bunny and adopting an endangered animal instead. This will change the history of Easter and "who" delivers candy each April. In Australia a push is on to replace the Easter Bunny.  That's right, the bunny is no longer welcome down under. 

Rabbits are causing all sorts of problems for the native plants and animals of Australia, so many organizations don't want to promote the rodent. 

Because of this, Australia is beginning to elevate the bilby to the job of delivering eggs, once held by the Easter Bunny. 

You can walk down supermarket aisles in Australia and you will find chocolate bilbies everywhere along with a book titled "Easter Bilby."   The book explains that the retiring Easter Bunny asked the Bilby to distribute chocolates this Easter. 

At some schools actual ceremonies are taking place where the Easter Bunny officially hands over his basket of Easter Eggs to the Bilby, announcing the new custom.The bilby is a small marsupial with a long nose, however it shares one feature with the rabbit, and that is the long ears.  

The bilby (or rabbit-eared bandicoot) was once common throughout southern Australia. Did you know it has an upside down pouch? They are now endangered and only found in a few isolated pockets of central Australia-where rabbits have not reached yet.

In an effort to get the entire nation behind the bilby many supermarkets are donating proceeds from its chocolate bilby sales to protecting the endangered animal. 

What does the Bilby have to do with Easter and the symbol of new life?  Many say the endangered animal has increased in population in the past couple of years as a result of all the attention and therefore brought new life for the Australian Bilby.

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