Left the house for an hour yesterday, and naturally the youngest son had three phone messages for me when I got back.

Took care of one local call quickly. A second, long distance, would have to wait for them to call back (she did, this AM).

Could not interpret the note for the third call, and he couldn't remember it, either. Need to work on his message taking skills.

Of course, my life is simpler if I can't read his notes, and they have to get back to me. So, maybe we'll leave things as they are.

The third caller called back, just as I mouthed my first bite of Scotch-norwegian stew for dinner.

She lives on a ranchette just out of town (with her heeler), and found an unusual skull in the hills behind her place. With curly black hairs around it. Thinks it's a dead bear (which would be unusual in the desert here, but possible).

She brought her specimen by today.

Less than half the skull was there, but I could tell it was either domestic sheep or domestic goat. Huge grinding teeth of an herbivore, large side-looking orbit for the eye.

I had to grab the sheep skull from the tub in the back yard to show her the similarities. And she didn't believe me when I told her bears' back teeth are just like ours. Designed for eating both meat and vegetation.

Retrieved my handbook on mammal skulls to show what a bear's teeth look like (shoulda just come in to grab the bear skull, but didn't want to leave the masked heeler unattended in the back yard, lest she jump the fence when I went inside).

So she left convinced, but a little disappointed.