question about E-series genes

[Pepperoni]

I was recently looking at a list of buns that someone has available for purchase, and then I noticed something funny. It said the parents were a chestnut agouti and a lilac otter. The colors of the babies were black, chestnut, orange and harlequin.

Maybe there's something about the E-series I don't grasp, but shouldn't those colors be impossible to get from that pairing?

The parents both have to have an "E", right?
Then there are the orange babies, which are "ee", so both parents would have to be Ee to have both orange and black or chestnut offspring, correct?

So where does the harlequin come in? One of the parents would have to carry ej, but if that were the case then there couldn't be orange babies, right?

 

[Zass]

It seems you have it figured out pretty well

Maybe the oranges have a little bit of harli brindling that the breeder didn't notice?

I'd be worried about those chestnut kits having harli brindling on them too.
And the harlequins being potentially torted. Someone did some no-no color crosses.

 

[Pepperoni]

That was my thought, that the "orange" ones were just really lightly marked harlis...

 

[Zass]

With mutts it wouldn't matter, but I'd stay away from any purebreds with that much going on..