The Slice: An added bonus: no egg sac

Some people think Francine Boxer is nuts.

But the way the former Spokane County chief executive officer spins it, she just happens to love spiders.

How much?

Well, she had a jeweler make a mold of a large, deceased arachnid. Then it was cast in gold.

“Top it off with a gold chain and it is the most beautiful piece of jewelry I own,” she said.

Her pet tarantula named after Lily Munster? That’s another story.

•Re: Dumb things done by people working at your home: That question came to mind after I heard about a guy who emerged from a basement remodeling project and dragged a heavy, rough-bottomed trash barrel across a living-room hardwood floor. Scraaaaaaaatch.

I’m not sure some readers’ stories fall precisely into that category. But they included the tale of a guy whose first act on the job was to cut his leg with a saw, requiring the homeowner to drive him to the emergency room.

Then there was the driveway widener who fell asleep in his truck while a slash pile he had created started to burn.

There was a slacker whose maintenance work on a rental property consisted of drinking three beers and then disappearing.

There was the woman who emptied most of the liquor bottles and then refilled them with some sort of colored water.

Another reader told about some guys who installed a water filter upside down and still in its wrapper.

Then there was the farm fence with smaller holes along the bottom designed to keep chicks penned that was erected upside down.

Another worker dropped a small tree on a power line, snapping it and starting a fire in some dry grass. “He jumped in his truck and drove off while I was calling the fire department,” wrote the reader sharing that story.

There were holes drilled in the wrong places, a roofer stepping through a ceiling, heavy wrenches dropped on fragile surfaces and on and on.

Then there was this from Stacy Vickers-Johnson.

“A few years ago, while living in a 100-year-old landmark home in Bonners Ferry, contractors came in to eco-insulate between the stone foundation and the structure of my home. Pets had been sequestered.”

Or so she thought.

After the project’s completion, a hard-to-pinpoint meowing could be heard.

Well, Poundcake the cat had managed to get trapped under the house. “She was sealed up tight as a drum,” said Vickers-Johnson.

It wasn’t really the workers’ fault. And though it took some doing, they were happy to free the female feline.

Poundcake was pleased, too.

•Today’s Slice question: Who is Spokane’s most assiduous defender of the status quo?