The Slice: Who wants to introduce these two Athols?

Maybe this could be a Doublemint commercial.

“America may not need another Athol, but it has one,” wrote Bob Strong.

While looking for the location of another city in New England, he discovered that there’s an Athol in Massachusetts.

“The name is so unique that I wonder if someone from the Massachusetts Athol founded North Idaho’s Athol. Do the residents even know the other place exists now, or is it a well-guarded ‘family secret’ between Athols? Or given the ‘red state’/ ‘blue state’ differences, can these two Athols even get along? Maybe they ought to start annual reunions, rotating from one to the other. What a news story: If Athols can be friends, can’t we too?”

Cleaning up after lake pigs: As she does each year near the end of summer, Teresa Vanairsdale picked up litter along Eastshore Road at Priest Lake. There were lots of empty beer cans, which she counted.

“Early on, I hoped Busch was going to win, but toward the end Keystone lapped all comers and won cans down.”

There was plenty of other trash, too, including a receipt for two pairs of shorts from the Red Ants Pants Foundation and a bait container clearly marked “PLEASE DON’T LITTER.”

Denise Marcum’s husband has three categories for couches: 1. NFL-worthy. Recliner built in. 2. OK for moderate weeknight viewing, reading, pet brushing, etc. 3. “The doctor will see you now.”

Silent autumn: The South Hill’s Jim Mahoney noted with dismay that Slice readers sharing pet-door stories seemed utterly unconcerned about cats killing countless birds. He passed along some statistics which indicate felines across the country destroy an astonishing number of our feathered friends. And he said he finds it odd that he could be in trouble with the law if he gave a kid a BB gun and urged him to go around shooting songbirds but cat owners who let their lethal-hunter pets go outside do so with impunity.

Today’s Slice question: How many of your neighbors do you know by name?