The Slice: Even good intentions can become scrambled

Nancy Lokken was about to head off to Seattle for a visit.

So the resident of Spokane’s Vinegar Flats neighborhood asked a neighbor to feed and water her nearly one dozen chickens and gather any eggs. The neighbor happily agreed.

When Lokken returned, the chickens were fine. But the place where the hens lay eggs was a little too empty.

You see, Lokken keeps four glass eggs in that nesting nook. They are intended to encourage the hens to produce more real ones. And Lokken has seen signs that the chickens have grown attached to them.

But the glass eggs, made in the former Czechoslovakia, were not there. So Lokken asked her neighbor about them.

The neighbor knew exactly which eggs she was talking about. She said she had kept them in her refrigerator. But there was something wrong with them. They got hard. So she threw them away.

Uff da, as someone with a Scandinavian name like Lokken might say.

As it happened though, the glass eggs were still in a garbage container that had yet to be picked up. So they were recovered and returned to their duty station.

Lokken was happy. The neighbor was happy, if a bit embarrassed. And the chickens were happy.

They say you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. But if the eggs are made of glass, well, they can hatch some friendly laughter without a single crack.

Putting it in neutral: Alice Spray wonders when Pullman will become “Pullperson” and The Spokesman-Review will become “The Spokesperson-Review.”

Pet peeve: It annoys Herb Limbaugh when interviewees, pro athletes for instance, repeatedly say “I mean” while attempting to gather their thoughts. “Like, it, um, I mean, just drives me crazy,” he wrote.

Tough love: Once when Jennie Larson was experiencing anxiety after being stung by an insect, her son reassured her by saying, “Mom…Mom…if you were allergic, you’d be dead by now.”

Better study hard: The other night at dinner, Jennifer Bell-Towne’s 4-year-old son announced he wants to be a zombie when he grows up.

Today’s Slice question: Were you glad you got a hearing aid?