"TAUNTZ!!!! Stop that incessant laughing! It's driving me nuts!" Mrs. Tauntz stood in the doorway to Tauntz' study and glared. Tauntz looked up from his book and said calmly, "I surely don't know what you're talking about, my dear. I'm reading a quite serious tome about the decline of the Roman Rabbit Empire in the 5th century AD. NOT a laughing matter, I assure you."

Mrs. Tauntz glared harder. "I hear laughter ALL the time in this burrow. The children are outside. The TV, stereo and radio are all turned off—even unplugged, mind you—and yet, the laughing continues."

Just then several Tauntzlets bound into the room. "What's all the hollerin' about?" said Freddy, the eldest. "We could hear you all the way across the field."

"Your mother is complaining about the laughter she is hearing in the burrow. Of course, we all hear it, too, don't we?" Tauntz winked at the children and then said in an aside, "I think your mother may be somewhat overworked and stressed. She seems to be hearing things."

"But, Daddy, I hear it, too!" Freddy said. "There's always somebody kinda chuckling. I told Fritz that it sounds like the walls are laughing. If you put your ear up to the wall, you can hear it even better."

Tauntz looked startled. "You not just saying that to make your mother feel better?"

"No, Daddy," Fritz said, "we've all heard it. It's kinda fun to have laughing walls."

Tauntz arose from his easy chair and said, "I must investigate." He headed off toward the kitchen and then into the pantry. "Oh, MY!" he said. "The walls aren't only chuckling, they're crumbling! Just look at this!" He pointed to the pile of dirt on the floor and the small holes in the wall and ceiling.

Just then a pair of shiny eyes followed by some brown spotted feathers popped through the wall. "Howdy, y'all! I'm pleased to meet you. Me and my brothers live next door. I guess we dug a little close to your tunnels. We usually just use someone's old abandoned tunnels, but there don't seem to be any around here. They're all in use. So we decided to dig our own, but I think my brother's sense of direction must be off a bit."

He looked at the puzzled, staring faces and continued, "Well, anyway, let me introduce myself. I'm Barney and I'm a burrowning owl. Sorry if our chuckling disturbed you. That's just what burrowing owls do. You'll meet my brothers Berney, Briney, Blaney, and Blimey soon. As soon as Mom sees how well we DON'T keep house, I'm sure she'll be sending our sister, Britney, to join us, as well. So, who are y'all?"

Tauntz stood up straight and said . . .

"Why, I, we, are, rabbits b-but b-b-b b-but this has been our den for years. This just won't do...having tunnels connecting...I don't mean to be rude b-b-but but, we have a major problem here. We Multipy."

"What do you mean, multiply?" asked Barney.

"We are The Tauntz Family. It's what we do." And just then all the tauntzlets began giggling, Mrs. Tauntz threw her apron over head and ran out the back yelling, "This won't do. This just won't do!"


"But we do Do, dear" yelled Tauntz as Mrs. Tauntz disappeared down the maze of tunnels.

The burrowing owls changed from giggles to little sobs. The tauntzlets, who looked forward to new playmates now began to sob also. When a …

When a very angry Mommy burrowing owl popped into the Tauntz family abode. "Children! What is going on here? You are supposed to be in 'time out' in your rooms for all the unnecessary giggling that is driving me nuts!"

"Whoops!" Mommy owls eyes bugged out as she looked around at all the rabbits who did not belong to her. " This is just not right. What is going on here?"

All the tauntzlets and Berney, Birney, Blaney, Blingy, began to all speak at once. "We were just, ah, they just showed up, ah, we want to be friends!"

"Well, I just don't know about this!" Mommy Burrowing owl was wiping her owl brow with her wingtip and tapping her talon on the floor.

"Please, please, let us be friends, please!" It was a chorus of owls and much too loud for grown up owls. "I'll have to thing about this and talk to the Tauntz parents. But it's now time for lunch, come along my Burrowing Babies."

"Awwwwwww mom! We wanna play!"

Mommy owl stomped her foot and said, "NOW!"

The little owlets whined and fussed and mumbled and followed their mother. "We'd rather play," they said.

They went off with mommy for a lunch of Fruity Nutty Tunnels and some Digger Pudding.

Meanwhile, the baby Tauntzlets followed their parents off for their own lunches, also whining about wanting to play with the burrowing owlets.

Tauntz was still unsure. Adult rabbits are territorial by nature, and he was still miffed about the sudden intrusion into the tunnels that he had worked so hard to create. "I bet those owls are up to something," he mumbled.

"It's just unnatural for owls to live underground! They should live in owlboxes, like Vinky and Vobble."

Still, the baby owlets had been very polite with his youngsters. He resolved to go ask Vinky and Vobble for advice about these strange owl intruders after lunch.

They all sat down to a wonderful lunch Mrs. Tauntz had prepared and, after some burping and napping, they went looking Vinky and Vobble to discuss the situation regarding their new neighbors, but they could not find them at home.

Tauntz said, "They'll probably be around tonight and we'll talk to them then."

As they went back into their burrow they could once again hear the racket coming from next door, so they decided to …

call on their Uncle Buster. If anyone could resolve this issue it would be Uncle Buster. They hopped into the Tauntz carriage and headed towards Buster's hole.

They met him outside. He was picking carrots. After they explained the dilemma, he laughed and said, " It's very simple, you only need to…

look down into burrows. So the Tauntz's took his advice. Lo and behold there they found many horks and other strange looking things! Mr. and Mrs. Tauntz surmised that the other items were very sparkly and were quite valuable looking. Mrs Tauntz said "I have heard of these sparkly things somewhere. I think they belong to creatures that live above the ground."

Upon further inspection, the Tauntz parents surmized that the Burrowing owl family were a bunch of "Borrowing" Owls not just "Burrowing" Owls!! So, they decided to find out what was going on!

Tauntz told the Tauntzlets to be very quiet. "We're going on a sleuthing expedition to see if all that glitters is not gold or is gold," he told them.

Their eyes widened with nervous excitement. "An expy diction," they cried.

Then Tauntz led them down a long tunnel and out the back of the wabbit warren where they discovered a huge "Golden Hork!"

"Oh, the Caboval Hork," they cried. "How did the Borrowing Owls get it?"

Tauntz began scratching at the ground around the hork. "Hhmmm," he thought, "a good name for a two-legger's restaurant," and the tauntzlets laughed. Then he felt something under his foot, and digging a bit more he found
…

a box. Well, it wasn't just any old box, it was a chest, a treasure chest maybe—or maybe not.

The rabbits scratched and scraped with their back legs until they had uncovered the entire chest. It had a big padlock on it and no key anywhere to be seen.

Tauntz contemplated what to do. Then he thumped on the chest a couple of times. The lock came loose. He slowly opened the chest. His eyes bugged. The tauntzlets eyes bugged even bigger. They could not believe their eyes. They saw…

lots and lots of golden-wrapped rat candy. And there were lots of gophers and gopher pizza. And lots of gold and silver plates and forks (for horks).

Just then, they heard scraping and shuffling coming down the tunnel. The burrowing owls were back! Tauntz and the Tauntzlets froze, caught red-handed snooping around. The mama burrowing owl puffed her feathers up indignantly. "What are you rabbits doing?" she hissed.

Tauntz put his ears back and thumped a foot. "We were looking to see what you owls are up to, digging around down here!" he protested. "We were here in this backyard tunnel patch first."

"Owls live in trees usually, right? So if you're digging a tunnel to live in there has to be some weird reason for it," he continued. "And look at all this stuff! Where did you get it, and why are you hiding it?"

Tauntz and the burrowing owl stared each other down, fur and feathers puffed up and angry. The tension could be cut with a knife, right up until the owlets and Tauntzlets started whimpering and sobbing. "This is scary! We want to be friends instead!"

Mrs Tauntz came in. "Enough of this right this minute! I just had a long talk with Vobble and Vinky, and it just so happens that they are related, by marriage. Vinky and Vobble asked them to move out here because life had gotten quite rough back east. And for your Nosey information, that chest is all they came with. It was a gift for Vinky, Vobble AND US! Now… do you all have anything to say? I thought you might…

want to sit down, talk a bit and get acquainted and see if we can't reach some peaceful resolution.

Mr. and Mrs. Tauntz had a long talk with Momma Owl. They decided that the children could play together—AFTER their chores were all done—and that they would repair all but one hole in the walls and ceilings of the warren. That one hole would be turned into a door that locked from both sided. That door would give each family an extra escape route in case of emergency and would allow the children to play inside in case of bad weather. Everyone was well pleased with the decision.

The children all whooped and hollered! It sounded like San Francisco or Kansas City after the playoffs! The bunnies were thumping and the owlets were chuckling and their parents all reached for the ear plugs.


The End