Joan shuffled through her pile of BIMS and, Anna noted, in the process managed to turn the photos of her sons so they faced away. "Here it is. Listen to this. 'Big bear. Major, mondo, hippo of a bear. Thousand to twelve hundred pounds.' "

"Too big?"

"By half. In Glacier, grizzlies don't reach the size they do in Alaska, where they have access to all that salmon protein. Here an average male weighs in at three-fifty or four hundred pounds, the females a little less. We get a lot of exaggerated reports. I can't say as I blame folks. When you see a bear and you're all alone in the big bad woods, they do have a tendency to double in size."

Joan's jocularity was forced. Equilibrium was not yet reestablished. The ghosts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John still hovered over the scat bottles, Anna wondered whether the situation with the boys was intense or if it was just Joan.

"I got a good one," she offered in the spirit of denial. She paged back till she located a form filled out in lavender ballpoint. "August fifth. No location. No time. No observer name. Species: grizzly. Age: twenty-six. Color: blond-don't know if this means the bear was twenty-six and blond, or the observer was."

"Blond for our bears is rare."

"That's not the rare part. This is." Anna read aloud from the "Comments" box. " 'Bear activity: juggling what looked like a hedgehog. Observer activity: standing amazed.' "

Joan laughed and the air was clear again. Tales of visitor silliness could always be counted on to bring back a sense of normalcy to park life. "Reports like that reassure me that Timothy Leary's alive and well and doing drugs with Elvis," the researcher said.