The Eagle Outdoors

The saga of the diabetic chipmunk

"All my candies are gone," read the first text of the morning from my wife, Julie. I was stymied, but then came the picture of an empty cutting board, an empty cookie sheet, and roughly 40 or 50 missing little paper baking cups. By the looks of things, she was right. They were gone. "They," to be more specific, were homemade chocolate covered cherries and peanut butter cups, both of which I would eat far ahead of anything containing any sort of nutritional value, but that's beside the point.

"Those cherries had been soaking in rum for a year," she told me. "The time. The money." I asked what had happened, and she said, "Abigail," incriminating the black dog now sleeping in front of Bim McCoy's Christmas tree. "Well, she's not long for this world," I said. "That's a lot of chocolate for a dog. I can't see that ending well."

At this point, she takes a breath, I take a breath, get a coffee, and begin pondering the situation with her while I am 2,600 miles away. Abigail seems in fine health; old, but in fine health. She's still very much alive, so there's that. We move into the back room, the scene of the crime; "Ground Zero," if you will.

The paper cups are strewn about the top of the freezer, but they're there. If Abigail was indeed the perpetrator, she, being part Lab, would have eaten everything. Chocolate, cherries, paper cups, cookie sheets, everything.

Looking and looking; almost like Sherlock Holmes with the magnifying glass. It's an old back porch our "little house" just turned 100 this past July. The linoleum, at least what's left, is missing in places over the narrow floorboards. With the colder temperatures and subsequent contraction, the gaps between the boards have gotten wider. Yet, one appears unusually wide. "That wasn't like that last night," Julie said, looking closer. Sure enough, the gap had achieved 'Hole Status,' complete with teeny-tiny gnaw marks.

Aha! A critter. Sometime during the night, something furry, smelling all that chocolatey goodness, enlarged a gap between the floorboards, accessed the laundry room from underneath the house, climbed the cardboard box leaning up against the freezer, and absconded with three pounds of homemade goodness. Rats! We have chickens, and you can't have chickens without a rat or two. That's just the way it is; however, we've never had them, to the best of our knowledge, around the house. Mice? Yes, but the cats tend to those. Rats? No.

Student of mammalian tendencies that I am, I explain to Julie there are no droppings. Rats leave droppings. Is there a sign? Scat? The crime scene, if you will, is rather neat and tidy, as if something picked up each item and, without eating any of them, carried them back through the hole. Not a glutton looking over its shoulder for the inevitable predator, but a hoarder, a storage specialist, a keeper of things, a chipmunk! I'll admit this is circumstantial at this point, but the evidence points to Neotamias townsendii, commonly known as the Townsend's chipmunk. Due to the fact this is a family publication, I won't tell y'all what my wife called it.

Somewhere under my house, curled up in a nest of Pink Panther R30 insulation (and that one winter glove I can't find) is a chipmunk. A happy, smiling (if chipmunks do actually smile), striped little rodent, surrounded by a treasure trove of chocolate, peanut butter, and rum-soaked maraschino cherries. Ah, the hangover I wish upon you, little varmint.

The Outdoor Speed Round

Your mind slipped a cog, and you forgot all about the fact you had Weird Uncle Glenn's name in the family gift exchange. He's an odd guy, your Mom's brother, but a likeable sort and one hell of a fisherman. What to do? What to do? Do what I do with my wife, and get him an annual combination fishing license for the 2026-27 license year. For $75 (or $28 if Uncle Glenn is 70 or older), the combination license allows the holder to fish in freshwater, saltwater, and harvest shellfish (including razor clams). It's a great deal, a great gift, and you'll look like you're right on top of things, even if you aren't.

The WDFW confirmed yet another series of razor clam digs for the period of Dec. 18-23 on the Long Beach Peninsula. Minus tides this time, but not huge minus tides, with the lowest being a -0.5 at 6:44 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 20. Hopefully the weather will have straightened up by then and folks can get out onto the sand. A second set of tentative digs is scheduled for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, continuing to Jan. 6, 2026. There's a -1.7 in the middle of that set, so keep that in mind.

Until next time, be safe out there. Make sure those hummingbirds have plenty of fresh nectar in the feeders. Just a tip, if you're seeing varied thrushes in the grass around town, something's fixing to happen, weather-wise, up in The Hills. Mother Nature usually gives us a warning. We just need to pay attention.

It's not too early to start thinking 'Show Season,' with one of the first events being the 66th Annual Portland Boat Show. This popular indoor/outdoor experience will be held Jan. 7-11, 2026, at the Portland Expo Center (2060 North Marine Drive). For a list of exhibitors, times, and other information, visit the show's website at pdxboatshow.com.