The Slice: Whatever happens, don’t spill the berries

It’s not that members of her family don’t care about one another’s well-being. It’s just that, well, there are priorities. Spokane’s Louise Harless went huckleberry picking with her parents recently. And occasionally one of them would lose his or her footing on the North Idaho hillside where they were foraging.

Naturally, this would prompt an expression of concern. But the question at that moment wasn’t “Are you all right?” or “Do you need help?”

It was “Did you spill any berries?”

“Then we would get around to asking if the person was OK,” wrote Harless.

So she and her mom, Judy Walker of Priest River, came up with a family motto: “You can break a leg, neck or arm, but don’t spill the berries.”

•Slice answer: “Opening our freezer door is almost always an adventure in reaction time to see not what, but how much one can catch before things hit the floor,” wrote Pat Cadagan.

•Misspeaking: “Whenever my wife, Judy, comes in from working out in the yard or the garden, or returns from one of the long walks she takes, she always comes in and announces that she is sweating like a stuck pig,” wrote Dave Payne.

Oh, well. Sweating, squealing, whatever.

Bill Dinneen had a boss who used to say, “We have to nip it in the butt!”

Any Barney Fife fan can tell you that is supposed to be “bud.” The expression Dinneen’s boss employed is actually plastic surgery lingo.

One more. “In our family, my mother is famous for saying that she’s going to “Kill two stones with one bird,’ ” wrote Lara Haman.

That would have to be one rugged bird.

•Today’s nose for news story: “My son, then kindergarten-age, once shoved a penny up his nose,” wrote Debbie Kitselman of Coeur d’Alene.

He wanted to see if it would fit. It did. But a trip to the emergency room was required to get it out.

“A friend of my husband’s, who was at the house at the time, called him Piggy Bank for a long time afterwards.”

•Not a logger: Several years before he retired from his law practice, Phyllis Quass’ husband, Everett Hofmeister, was away on a trip when he encountered an old friend.

This friend introduced him to a man she was dating, noting that Hofmeister was from North Idaho.

The man asked if he was a logger.

“No,” Hofmeister replied. “That’s an honorable profession.”

•Not a logger 2: Pat in Tyler told about a friend who couldn’t find an adequate ladder and so pruned a tree branch using a shotgun blast.

•Slice answer: The agitated squawking of a pet chicken named Geraldine once saved Mary Alderman from drowning. (The noise alerted her grandfather.)

•Today’s Slice question: What do you wish you could buy in Spokane? (I’m not trying to start a gripefest. I’m just curious.)