Spent a few minutes at lunchtime today watching people hide Easter eggs on the grounds outside the Emilie Court assisted living facility on Eighth Avenue.

In all, there were 1,200 plastic treat-containing eggs, I was told.

This, of course, was the calm before the storm. The kids had not arrived yet.

Have you ever watched a big Easter egg hunt? Not a pretty sight. The dominant themes tend to be survival of the fittest, might makes right and frontier justice.

No matter how well coached the older children are about leaving a few of the easy-to-find eggs for the littlest kids, the start of the proceedings makes youngsters go crazy. Almost invariably there are nasty blind-side hits, brazen acts of poaching and demonstrations of wild-eyed greed that would awe Wall Street.

Often, these melees produce tears in the eyes of the slower, shy hunter gatherers left to ponder empty baskets.

I gently alluded to these cold, hard facts of life and an Emilie Court staffer told me they had a plan. The kids were going to be divided up by age groups and kept in separate areas.

Sounds like a good idea. At least then it should be a fair fight.

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