The Easter bunny pulled double duty in Palmerton on Saturday, with the beloved annual egg hunt drawing droves of kids and parents to the borough’s parks.

A morning session at the Memorial Park and an afternoon event at the Borough Park drew hundreds of children to hunt for treats and prizes.

Hungry hunters were broken up into age groups of toddlers to one year olds, two and three year old, four and five year olds, six and seven year olds, eight and nine year olds, and 10, 11 and 12 year olds.

Groups were set loose at separate times in order to keep some order at the band shell, where prizes were distributed to lucky ticket holders.

“I got a big chocolate bunny and Dots!” Oliva Silliman, 5, said excitedly after she turned in her prize paper.

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The egg hunt is a long-standing tradition in the borough, and just recently, the Chamber of Commerce and the Aquashicola Fire Company took the reigns in order to keep it going. The Palmerton Lions Club and Palmerton Memorial Park also helped with sponsoring the hunts. Volunteers from the fire company put out the eggs and counted down the start times.

Volunteers Susan and Larry Arner came out to help with the effort, handing out prizes and maintaining some semblance of order in the field. While it was rather chaotic, Susan said it was well worth it to maintain a tradition that some volunteers remembered from their own childhoods.

“We run it for the kids, it’s all about them,” she said.

The pleasant early spring weather made for better conditions than the previous weekend, when the event was originally scheduled.

“We did get a nice turnout, a lot of people came out today. We did have postpone the event last weekend due to the snow. It was a much nicer day today than it would have been last weekend,” Arner said.

SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM THE EGG HUNT

While the older groups were more than capable of scooping up every available egg in mere seconds, the younger crowd needed a bit of assistance from parents.

However, a few little ones, like one-year-old Jace Wyman, were able to pitch in a bit.

“He figured out how to stick the eggs in the basket, so he had a lot of fun,” Jace’s mother Heather said. “It’s always fun, every year. They do such a great job.”

While each hunt took mere seconds, it was easy to see how much it meant to the crowd of excited kids and parents.

“It’s just all about the kids, and the community coming together for the kids to have a good time. That’s really what we’re here for, to make Easter a little bit brighter for the kids, the community and the surrounding area,” Arner said.