This is Scooter’s toy Chipmunk. 

Here, with Scooter’s mauled Chipmunk, is the new Chipmunk presently stored on a closet shelf.

Those of you among Scooter’s friends may remember that in his first year-and-a-half of life, a series of soft, stuffed Lambchop toys were brought, one at a time, from closet shelf to toy box, and soon thereafter to trash, thanks to the pup’s Call of the Wild which seems to be: “Shred the thing! Pull the stuffing out of it! It may be dangerous! Find that Squeaker! There! In the foot! And that other foot! Who knows what that shrill voice in its belly might bespeak!” It was something like that, Scooter’s Call. 

 The fiery Douglas Squirrel intending to frisk our birdfeeder is the reason Scooter’s stuffed squirrel now is called Chipmunk. Originally, Scooter responded to, “Squirrel, get it!” by going to his toy box and sniffing past the Purple Ball, the two Small Balls, the Rope, the Lama (laid to rest now, having been eviscerated), Yellow (the yellow wiener-shaped dog), Rabbit, Monkey, Kong Tire, and the soft, so-far-intact Cat. 

“Squirrel!” I say, and Scooter assaults the balcony door, pleading, “Open it. Now!”It’s the real squirrel!” Stuffed squirrel named Chipmunk is tossed aside. We dare not say the “S” word lest we want mayhem and major Doodle stress.

 This is Scooter’s real Squirrel leaving the balcony table;     

 Real Douglas squirrel (DS) that frequently visits Scooter’s porch, works to rob a bird-feeder . . . if he/she can conquer a glass window. It made it once, proving experts right, it can jump up five feet, which it did from the arm of a porch chair to the elevated feeder. The chair has been moved. John Muir, toward the end of the 19th century said of this small rodent, “He is, without exception, the wildest animal I ever saw—a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life . . ..” 

 Scooter agrees, and Scooter, being a little bolt of life himself, excitedly asks that the balcony door be opened so he might catch the critter whose four front incisors never stop growing—six inches a year if not regularly filed by gnawing hard nuts, seeds, stripping the scales from conifer cones (plenty thrive in the evergreen wetlands across a road from our balcony)—or, if necessary, the hard skull of a silly goldendoodle. 

Our English word, Squirrel, derives from the Greek “skiouros,” i.e., “shade tail.” Our particular visitor is presently doing what Douglas Squirrels do in the fall. This non-hibernating, non-crepuscular mammal is preparing for winter by hoarding food, storing it in a tree trunk larder or a ground midden that has been used by its family for generations. Should you come upon such a messy mound under a squirrel’s favorite tree (usually situated near the center of an approximately four-acre territory), expect to see a pile of empty nut shells and cone scales, quite like many human roads around the world, untended, and trash-strewn, season after season. 

 “Scooter,” I say, hesitating to open the door.  He waits impatiently.

 “Squirrels will fight to the death to defend territory, and that “cute thing” likely considers your balcony his/hers. I stomp my foot as I ease the door open, warning DS that Scooter is coming. Fast. Not nearly as fast as squirrel moves when it hears the door open. It swivels its hind feet backward for a swift departure, easily leaps forward nine feet, then breaks into a 14mph run across the balcony floor, jumps to a neighbor’s roof, scolding all the while, and finds safety in a mass of wall-climbing greenery. 

“There’s a squeaker in that small thing,” Scooter is sure. He is right, but best sometimes to call a spade a spade, a closed door a good thing, a squirrel a squirrel, and a stuffed squirrel a chipmunk.