Electronic Chirping Easter Bunny, Oh, I got questions.

Factual Questions
1

Here’s how it happened, we were at the drug store making our Easter goodie run, and I spotted the cutest, small and furry, stuffed little chick. I was enchanted to discovered that when you picked it up it chirped just like a little chick!

My bedridden mother-in-law shares our home with us, her stroke left her paralysed but she has one good arm and hand, and I thought this little trinket would surely bring a smile to her face.

On Easter Sunday, before her breakfast, I took her in the flowers we’d bought for her and some chocolate eggs and such and I also handed her the little chick.

Imagine my disappointment when it made not a peep. Over the next few minutes it went back and forth from my hand, where it chirped and chirped, back into her hand, I moved it around on her trying different spots, had her hang on to it for a while and various other things but nothing could make it go for her!

It was freaking me out, just a little bit. She has survived 4yrs after a devasting stroke and I have, in the passed, joked with the mister that she’s really an immortal, she ain’t ever gonna leave this world, she’ll outlive us both and like that. [I have no defense other than to say around here sometimes it’s laugh or cry.]

I swear, I was this close to getting my hand mirror and checking to see if she had a reflection.

I continued to test everyone in range yesterday (searching for the undead, as I call it.) They all passed, but this morning the caregiver turned out to be also among the less than alive.

I’m not really sure how the thing works, but I’ll tell you what I do know. It’s small, about the size of a cat toy, on the bottom are two metal nodes/bumps. When my (your?) palm makes contact with both bumps it chirps. I also know there is a battery inside. Is it heat that’s setting it off, I’m not sure. Is it completing an electrical circuit? I’m not sure. But it doesn’t go off anywhere but my palm.

For the ones that couldn’t set it off, it made no difference how long they held it our how warm they felt to the touch.

It’s kind of freaking me out a little bit, I need to get to the bottom of it.

How about it, did you see one of these over Easter? Care to explain what it’s working by and why it doesn’t work for some?

2

Is it a chick or a bunny? :confused: One might think it’s a chick because it chirps, but those Cadbury’s ads convinced a lot of us that, at least around Easter time, bunnies chirp and lay eggs.

3

Dry skin is why it didn’t work. To give you a personal example, an elderly neighbor could brush against the electric fence and not feel it (but the horse biting the apple in her hand did!)

4

Hats off to Acidkid.

Dead on, pardon the pun.

I just now tested your theory, and, indeed with a little moisture transfer it works no problem.

And you’ll be delighted to know it brought a big smile to her face.
Since my days largely revolve around fishing for that smile, I’m counting this as a great day.

Thanks Acidkid, you’re the man!

(And, of course, it’s always a good day when you find you do NOT share your domicile with the undead…but that goes without saying.)

5

A lot of the McD’s happy meal toys (at least the ones that have electronic innards) work in this way - two little conductive rubber bumps must be shorted to activate the device. Usually, they are very sensitive - one person can touch one bump while another person touches the other - the moment the two people touch each other (even really gently with a part of the skin you might consider ‘dry’), the circuit is made and the device activates. Some of the happy meal boxes have patches of conductive ink printed on them so that the toy can be activated by pressing it on the box.