The Slice: One last piece of the puzzle awaits

Nancy Hill, director of the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service (SCRAPS), has been to every state except Hawaii.

As it would happen, she will be retiring in a few weeks.

I wonder if Slice readers want to pass along any retirement travel suggestions for Nancy, who has had an impressive, important career.

Let’s move on.

Just wondering: Have any of your cousins ever been famous?

Cheney’s Mary Ann Schoeff is the cousin of Vonda Kay Van Dyke, who was the 1965 Miss America.

In addition to that title, Vonda Kay, whose talent was ventriloquism, was also Miss Congeniality.

Dads’ Advice Department: “My dearly departed father told me that if I ever had to punch a guy, make sure that it was hard enough that he couldn’t get back up,” wrote Janet “Pinki” Culbertson. “I heeded that advice once.”

D’oh!: Someone on one of Spokane’s neighborhood council online bulletin boards posted a report about a regularly visiting “Homer pigeon.”

Maybe that’s a malapropism. Or perhaps Homer is the bird’s name.

The poster, who seems like a nice person, noted that the pigeon visits every day but frightens someone working at the home. So did anyone know where the bird belonged?

Perhaps it is a free range pigeon. But it is welcome to take up residence among the Chronicle roof gargoyles and deliver news updates to downtown denizens below.

Double bogey: “Some of my friends in the older generation like to use voice texting instead of entering messages by keyboard,” wrote Slice reader Gene Teigen. “I have warned them they need to speak distinctly when doing this.”

It seems one of his golfing friends, whose name is also Gene, sent a spoken-word text message to his wife that was supposed to be “I will be home in 20 minutes am leaving the course.”

But the text message that displayed on his wife’s phone read “I will be home in 20 minutes and I want a divorce.”

Perhaps that gentleman’s wife initially shrugged it off as indicative of him having another exasperating round.

Slice answer: “We watch a lot of British shows, particularly detective series, and always have to use closed captioning,” wrote Caroline Baker. “While we speak English, we just have a hard time understanding their English.”

Warm-up question: Who is Spokane’s biggest credit-stealer?

Today’s Slice question: Have you ever regretted an act of kindness?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Sometimes simply telling a problem person to go to blazes saves everyone involved a lot of time and energy.