NEW YORK (Reuters) – Easter is a special holiday for 6-year-old Nora Heddendorf. It’s a day when she loves to get dolled up in a fancy dress and shiny shoes, and have fun with family and friends hunting for brightly colored eggs.
Six-year-old Nora Heddendorf displays her do-it-yourself kits for a painted rock hunt she and her mother are organizing in their town of Medford Lakes, New Jersey, U.S., March 28, 2020 amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. Samantha Heddendorf/Handout via REUTERS
This year the coronavirus pandemic has forced her to adapt. She will accessorize her Easter outfit with a white paper mask, blue disposable gloves, and a container of disinfectant wipes. And after hearing that her New Jersey town’s annual egg hunt may be canceled, she came up with the idea of a “rock hunt.”
Nora’s hunt not only substitutes brightly painted stones for eggs, which are in short supply at some stores, but it also allows her neighbors to do their hunting during their social-distancing walks.
“I was sad it was going to be canceled because of the virus,” the kindergartener told Reuters in a phone interview. “I want to make people happy.”
From the White House to small town parks, the pandemic has forced the cancellation of traditional Easter egg hunts and “rolls” across the United States, clos