We are real as long as children want us to be,"" says the Candy Egg Bunny to skeptical Walter -- and then proceeds to relate the silly story of a sweet-eating witch who once changed some peeping birds into bunnies to shut them up. But the bunnies bugged here even more by hopping all about, until at last she flew off, leaving her store of jelly beans and candies for the birdie/bunnies to pass out to celebrating neighbors. And that's the origin, according to Weil, of a custom which perhaps deserves such icky treatment but certainly won't benefit from it.