Easter Platypus, we love you

It's Easter, and that means that a small, furry mammals with long ears and which go around by saltatorial locomotion, will be depositing their aposematically colored eggs the world over. A bunny? I think not! Clearly this is a monotreme of sorts, belonging to the only group of mammals that lay eggs. I shale refer to it as the monotreme hare. It isn't so hard to believe that people have been mistaking this previously unrecognized member of the group for a lagomorph. The long eared, long legged condition has evolved independently several times; i.e. Kangaroos, leptictids, elephant shrews and even in rhinogrades. Furthermore, besides shrews, platypi are the only poisonous mammals. Modern male platypi have a poison secreting barb on their hind legs. I suspect that this is present in both genders of the monotreme hare and is used by the females to adhere an outer layer of toxin to the eggs. The bright coloration, deposited by the shell gland in the uterus, as in birds, is meant to alert would be ovivores to the threat. The short spring laying period corresponds closely to just a few days after the emergence of the monotreme hare from torpor.
Unfortunately, humans, able to avoid the toxins placed only on the outer shell, have nearly driven he monotreme hare into extinction. In order to continue to hone the foraging skills of their progeny, in the absence of genuine monotreme eggs, adult humans hide artificially colored avian eggs. Due to the wholesale misidentification of this rare mammal for one that breeds prolifically, there has been nothing done for the conservation of the monotreme hare. Please take this day to recognize the plight of these evolutionary novelties. I'm told that this day also marks the anniversary of some poor fellow getting nailed to a tree for trying to overly nice to people, but we're talking about the possible extinction of an entire species, which must surely take precedence.