"Oh, my! Oh, my! Oh, dear! Heaven's to Betsy, what am I going to do?" Tauntz was pacing back and forth in front of his warren. He was wringing his little paws and moaning.

The owlets heard his moaning and flew down to see what they could do.

Vinky put her wing around Tauntz' shoulder and said, "Tauntz, what is it? It can't be that bad, can it?"

Tauntz wailed! "It's horrible. It's catastropic! It's beyond imagination!"

Vobble laughed, "Tauntz, nothing is THAT bad. What's wrong?"

Tauntz wailed some more. "It's just the end of Easter as we know it! No eggs, no candy, no baskets . . . "

Vinky and Vobble wailed.

Zorro walked up, grinning, and said, "Hey! What's all the caterwauling about? Did somebody cancel Easter or something?"

Tauntz and the owlets wailed even louder, "Yes!!!!"

Zorro tossed each of them a hunk of cheese and said, "Here, plug your mouths with that and stop the noise and then somebody tell me what's going on."

After a moment, Tauntz was calm enough to say, "We rabbits keep special, secret, hidden burrows all around the world where we stash all the Easter eggs and candy that is delivered on Easter morning. It's a wonderful system and has worked for centuries."

"But this year, several natural disasters have destroyed those secret burrows. Without them, we can't deliver everything in time. We need somewhere we can hide candy and eggs until the important day."

Zorro thought for a moment and then said, "Wait a minute. You mean to tell me there's more than one bunny delivering stuff?"

Tauntz grinned and said, . . .

"Yes, yes, there are dozens and hundreds and thousands and millions and gazillions."

"Oh, WOWWWW!" they all said with their mouths full. "How on earth does that work?"

"Well, we divide the earth up into a grid and we each are assigned a neighborhood by the Great Rabbit in the Sky. But, but, but… we are so lost this year! HELP!!!"

The grid idea seemed perfect, but where to start? They had lost so much time. The little group gathered around Tauntz and began to think collectively about rescuing Easter."

"Ah, cried Tauntz. I know what we need to have."

"What?" they all asked?

"We need Horace our Pelican Friend to find the baskets and gather up all the candies and re-route them throughout our grids."

They were all nodding yes when out of nowhere Horace flew down.

"I heard my name, my ears were ringing, and my beak was opened so I grabbed a fishlet anfd came right down. Howdy, you ole friends. Now what is it you propose I should be doing?"

"We need help gathering up all the scattered Easter eggs and candy. We thought maybe you could find the baskets and carry them back in that huge mouth of yours."

Horace at first was a bit insulted, that huge mouth crack, but then he realized he really could be of some help and he did love his rabbit and owl friends.

"Sure, but i think I may need some help. Let me gather some of my other "big mouth" friends and see if they're busy. Maybe they would like to help, especially if they thought there might be a treat for them when they were done."

"Oh, that would be wonderful, Horace," Tautz said.

So off Horace went to find some of hs friends and family to enlist their help. "Wait here," he called back to everyone. "I will bring back some friends and they we can formulate a plan."

As Horace flew away Zorro turned to Tauntz and said, "Now tell me about this missing candy. Are we talking no chocolate? 'Cause if you're talking no chocolate then we've got a BIG problem. I'm getting faint just thinking about it. I need a trip to CC's and I need it now! She always has something to make me feel better."

The owlets agreed that a trip to CC's would make everybody feel better. They told Tauntz he needed it too. As they turned to leave, the Dude came out and said . . .

"I couldn't help overhearing your problem, and I'd like to help." He held up an interesting-looking device. "I've hooked this tracker up to my Google Earth, and I think I can use it to locate the missing Easter treats."

He told them that he just needed a bit more time to get it working, and asked them to bring him some food back to help him think. They agreed, and flapped off to CC's feeling heartened.

The food was delicious as usual, and they made sure to bring the dude back a large box of takeout. "Can we help you with your invention?" Vobble asked excitedly.

"You sure can," the dude answered. "In order to get it working properly, I still need..."

"the last locations of the missing treats."

Tauntz said, "Dude I can give you those locations, but I fear that most of the treats were destroyed."

Now Zorro wailed, "There is no way they are destroyed, we MUST have another alternative."

The Dude said, "Sometimes technology is flawed. Good old logic and common sense is the answer."

Tauntz replied, "Go with your heart, best guess and then see…

"Ok," said Vinky, "Let's go with logic, common sense, AND hearts! Let's see - if the treats in a lot of the usual sources are destroyed, let's think of some NEW sources!"

"Where would lots of Easter treats be likely to be? How about factories and warehouses?"

"And WalMarts!" put in Vobble.

Turning to the Dude, Vinky said, "Now for some technology - Dude, can you Google Earth likely factories, warehouses, and Walmarts for us?"

"Well, lets see…" said the Dude. "First I'll do this, and then this, and then…"

While the Dude was searching for new candy souces, the others were…

intuitively thinking of the large squadron of Pelicans that must have been amassed by their friend and voila!! They were right. Whilst the dude was busy with the techy stuff, they had gotten a message from the GREAT Rabbit in the Sky!!

He called together the whole squadron and showed them a vast vat of molten chocolate—actually three vats; one dark, one milk, and one white.Their eyes were bugging out!! And they could smell the delicious aromas.

"But wait," said GREATIE. "I have aa mold for each of you to hold delicately in your somewhat large albeit lovely beaks and when the mixtures are cool enough I will pour them into your beaks to set in forms of eggs and rabbits and ribbons and bows."

When the chocolate was ready it was poured into the molds to cool into rabbits and ribbons and bows. They cooled quickly and when they were popped out of the molds, it was lovely. Enough candy for all the baskets.

Our pelican friends had gathered up a lot of baskets and so everyone got going filling the baskets with all this fresh made candy. Of course for every candy they put in a basket, they ate one, but there was still plenty to go around. After the baskets were filled, everyone started thinking about where to hide them. Tautz and Dude made everyone hide their eyes while they hid the baskets.

It was lots of fun finding little nooks and crannies in trees and bushes and in the grass and when they were all done hiding the baskets, they let everyone uncover their eyes and start looking.

After playtime it was back to work again. They had to get the candy all around the world. They were facing days of work.

Just then CC showed up with a big truck full of food to keep everyone going as they worked. She had hundreds of Gopher Pizzas and huge platters of Bunny Fudge. Then she brought a whole table of bunny butt cakes - little bunnies with their heads in a hole and tails in the air. After they all stopped laughing, they dug in.

Then, bellies full, the pelicans loaded their beaks full of baskets and candy and eggs and flew off.

Just then, they heard a loud alarm!

Tauntz thumped his hind foot. "That's the warren alarm!" he yelped. "Someone is trying to steal the information about where all the treats will be hidden on Easter morning!"

"No fair!" Vinky and Vobble cried in unison. "If one person knows where all the treats will be, then nobody else will get any!"

Tauntz put his ears back and thumped again. "I'll go see who it is." He scampered down his rabbit hole in a flash.

The owlets and Zorro peered down the rabbit hole, craning their heads to try to see down into the tunnel.

Several minutes passed, and then there was a shuffling scrambling noise and Tauntz climbed back out of the burrow. He had someone with him. Everyone gasped. It was...

Zorrina! Everyone stared at her in astonishment! Zorro finally said, "But why, Zorrina?"

"Hey everyone - don't get the wrong idea!" She said defensively. "I was just trying to find out what sites you have covered so I could try to find some more. I have friends all over the world, you know!"

Everyone let out a sigh of relif, since no one wanted to believe that Zorrina could be that mean.

"And I got far enough to know that there are areas of the world that you left out completely!" And she went on to list a few.

They scrambled to add those to their list and were relieved to find that the Google Earth search for factories, warehouses and WalMarts showed plenty of reserves to provide for those areas.

So they got busy with a plan for delivering the additional candy and had it almost finished when they hit another snag.

The Dude came screaming out his house. "It's horrible. It's catastropic! It's beyond imagination!"

Vobble looked at Vinky and said, "Here we go again!"

The Dude said, "All is ruined. My drives have all crashed. All our data is lost. All MY work is lost!"

"I have no idea what went wrong. All of a sudden all my screens went black."

Just then Zorro came sauntering out. "Hey, Dude," he said. "Sorry about tripping over that power cord. I plugged it back in. Boy, it sure makes a difference in there when those screens come on. Much brighter!"

Everyone heaved a huge sigh of relief and headed home to rest.

Back in the owl box, Vinky and Vobble looked at each other as they puffed up with pride. "Well, Vobble, that was a good day's work and a job well done, if I say so myself! We helped Tauntz out of a really sticky situation."

"Yeah, Vinky, and we also helped save Easter for the whole world! I can't wait for Easter to get here now. Just think of all the candy and treats and eggs and… wait a minute! EGGS?? What am I saying?"

"Oh, Vobble, we had this discussion last year. They're not OWL eggs. They're just run-of-the mill, plain ole eggs. Who knows where they came from? And besides, most of them are chocolate or caramel or peanut butter or strawberry or cherry or fudge or … oh MAN!  Now you've got me going!"

I need to call Horace and have his flock check their big bills and see if they could possibly have missed a little stash of chocolate in there somewhere. Now I know how Zorro feels when he's out of cheese."

"I NEED CHOCOLATE!!!! NOW!!!!!!!"


The End