The Slice: Creature feature is best part of sprinkler systems

Automatic sprinkler systems certainly have their advantages.

Mostly you just have to deal with a nifty, high-and-dry control panel.

But eventually there comes a day when you need to lift the hatch off the underground minivault containing the guts of the system.

And that, my friends, is an invitation to meet all sorts of interesting creatures.

Let’s move on.

•Slice answer: Tim Crabb helped demolish the house he grew up in in Cheney.

•Reader challenge: Name a Washington product that’s better than the B-17.

•TPS reports: So I was exchanging e-mails with a local guy who works for Symantec. After we had wrapped it up, I found myself wondering if anyone ever asks him, “Hey, isn’t that the name of the business in the 1999 movie ‘Office Space’?”

For the record, that was Initech.

But you can see how some might get mixed up. People are always confusing the S-R with The Shinbone Star, even though that paper was a creation of the 1962 movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”

•Slice answer: In the matter of coping with seasonal allergies, several readers said they swear by neti pots.

If you are unfamiliar with these nasal-rinse devices, all I can say is that you must have missed the stories the Today section has run in recent years. And really, whose fault is that?

•Today’s yard-work mishap: Alan Millar’s wife, Karen, learned firsthand why those rolling garbage barrels display warnings about not moving them while the lid is open.

She was pushing one across the yard while holding a rake in one hand. Suddenly the barrel got stuck and abruptly stopped rolling. But Karen kept going and proceeded to fall in.

“She and the garbage can collapsed together to the ground,” said her husband.

•Speaking of saving buttons during hard times (last Monday’s Slice): “My father and a friend were walking through a fruit orchard during the Depression when they saw a ragged looking shirt on the ground,” wrote Sylvia Beach of Spokane Valley. “They looked around and didn’t see anyone, so they cut the buttons off and shared them.

“They walked down the row of trees and just before leaving the orchard they saw a man in a tree picking fruit. He didn’t have a shirt on.

“Needless to say, they got out of there really fast.”

•Coming in Tuesday’s Slice: A reader who has lived in both cities weighs in on Spokane and Seattle.

•Today’s Slice question: Where does it hurt?