They were dropped off, an accidental abandonment, ending up homeless, and so she brought them home.

But she's hoping to find their "mom." For one thing, they're not the right color.

Nothing personal, they just don't fit in her house.

She decorates in earth tones. And the two bears, as tall as toddlers, are different colors. One is purple and the other is red as maraschino cherries have ever been.

"They're not my schtick," said Mary Ann Rausch, who has such things as treasured paintings on her walls, and a gilded aspen leaf sculpture and other just-so interior design.

"They're … cute,"she said of the bears, who look to be brand-new, one tagged in the ear. But they don't spend time in the northwest Bismarck home's main viewing area. She keeps them downstairs, on a couch, in a large plastic bag tied with an ivory silk braid, just the way she found them.

When she found them too late.

Rausch, a volunteer at the Seeds of Hope thrift store, which benefits the Abused Adult Resource Center, 520 E. Main Ave., said it was Christmas rush time, a Thursday in early December. The store's main Christmas area, a 1,200-square-foot room, was an avalanche in the making, bursting with Christmas decorations, Santas, angels and snowmen and such.

She was there, organizing, cataloguing, when in rushed a woman in her, possibly, late 70s.

She told Rausch her granddaughter had dropped off a wrong bag.

"Have you seen it?" she asked Rausch.

She explained one was entirely red.

"I think she said they were 'heirloom bears,'" Rausch recalls.

Rausch rushed. Ran to the loading dock to see if they were there. She asked people sorting if they had seen the bears in the mountain of donations. No, they hadn't.

She went back and reported the bad news. The woman who seemed to be in a great rush, as if she were about to miss a plane, a train or a Red Hat Society meeting, raced off before Rausch could get a phone number.

About three days later, Rausch was working in the Christmas room when the bears showed up, carried in by a volunteer.

Rausch saw red and knew right away which red bear that was.

Apparently, monumental sorting duties on the dock that time of year delayed the bears from getting to the Christmas room in time for a reunion with the harried owner.

There was nothing Rausch could do.

A note was put on the bears, "Not for sale, owners may come back." And the bears were put in display area. But Rausch worried: Something might happen to them, so they were put in a storage room in case owner returned. But Rausch worried:What if in the crammed store room, the bears would get lost again when the owner finally came around?

So Rausch took them to her home for safekeeping and put a notice in the thrift shop's winter newsletter hoping the bear owner would see it.

Not a word.

So Rausch hopes the owner is reading this.

Or, if not the owner, someone who has a proper home for them. Preferably with children.

And the right color scheme.

To reach Rausch, call 221-2845 and leave a message.