MISQUAH — The paper went up last week. The animal ladder — hand-drawn by Ruth Aune in 2003 and extended by increments ever since — has been given a fresh blank panel above the eagle tier, taped in place by Megan Tollefson while two patrons of the children’s corner supervised from below, because Brynn Solberg has read past the top of it and something has to go up there.

What goes up there has not been decided, and the decision is not Tollefson’s. “That’s Mrs. Aune’s ladder,” she said. “She invented the animals, she drew the animals, and she has views about which animal belongs above an eagle. I have been told to leave the space blank and bring a pen on the twenty-eighth.”

The finale is set for Friday, August 28, at 2 p.m. Ice cream has been ordered at a quantity reflecting the record class of forty-one, which is to say more than last year and, per the donor, “enough that we are not doing arithmetic on a hot afternoon.” Certificates are being lettered this week. Mrs. Aune telephoned Thursday to ask whether they were being done in green ink and was assured they were; she then asked who was doing the lettering, was told, and offered what Tollefson described as “encouragement with a specific note about the capital S.”

She intends to present the top tiers herself. The library has stopped adding qualifiers to that sentence. Cards may be brought to the desk or to the finale, where the town is advised she will be receiving them in person, and where a piece of blank paper above the eagle tier is waiting for whatever she decides an eagle is not enough.