"Treasure your good memories and you need not worry about ending a banquet."

Possibly one of the best fortune cookie fortunes I've ever received.

From what was certainly the worst Chinese restaurant I've ever eaten in.

Is there such a thing as "Cowboy-Chinese cuisine"?

Anyway, it was a day spent in a meeting, 120-some miles away. But not really a meeting, since there was no one running it, and no agenda. More of a work session. And useful things actually got accomplished.

We were delayed, however, since the conference room was unexpectedly in use. A game warden having a conversation with a citizen. Debating the species of a bear skull. A skull found and picked up over twenty years ago.

If it's a black bear, as the hunter asserted, he gets to claim the third largest black bear skull of the world.

And he also gets a ticket. And does not get to keep the skull.

If it is the skull of a grizzly bear, as the warden very nearly concluded, the hunter gets several tickets, and his legal problems are just beginning.

And he still doesn't get to keep it.

After he left, his visions of record books bearing his name shattered, we all gathered over the huge skull, and made checks of our own. Measuring the third premolar, a fairly concise distinction between the species.

Grizzly.

We examined the shape of the arch above the vomer (when holding the skull upside down).

Grizzly.

And the shape of the forehead bones. And the zygomatic arch. And the sagital crests.

Grizzly. Grizzly. And grizzly.

I suspect soon that gentleman will be looking even less happy than when we saw him.