On the last day of December I spent a few moments finalizing my mileage log for 2014.

The last entry was my 130th outing of the year.

After giving thanks for being so blessed, for having the opportunity to spend so much time doing what I love, I thought back on some of the past year’s experiences.

In this reflective mood, some of the events that stood out were the oddities one gets to be a part of, experiences that have little to do with how successful — in terms of fish caught or game bagged —the day was.

It was a mid-fall trip on the middle Allegheny that provided one such recollection.

I was guiding two fellows, a retired doctor from central Pennsylvania, and his cousin, who resides near Murrysville.

As we finished working the targeted section of bank I mentioned that it was time to move.

As I moved from the bow of the boat to its console, the gentleman fishing from the back deck announced, in a voice seasoned with both surprise and anxiousness, “Jeff, you’ve got a squirrel in your boat.”

Indeed, there was a soggy red squirrel perched on the boat’s transom.

I suspect the little guy had fallen from an overhanging limb, an incident aided by the strong wind of the day.

After his splashdown our drift must have intersected with his swim for shore, at which point he climbed aboard to hitch a ride.

I idled the boat close to the bank, and then gave him a nudge with the rod tip.

He easily covered the short distance to shore, and saved us a “Christmas Vacation-like” fracas.

Squirrels aren’t the only critters to have shown in my boat uninvited.

Earlier this summer, in a scenario similar to the squirrel incident, a client calmly declared that there was a snake one board.

It was coiled up on the same perch used by the water-logged rodent.

This time the rod tip flick failed.

The garter snake, which was only about a foot long, fell down into the splash well, where it had access to the entire length of the boat, in the void between the hull and deck.

It never reappeared that day, and shortly afterward the boat spent a week up at my dealer’s lot in Franklin, getting some maintenance work done.

I figured that should give the reptilian stowaway plenty of time to make a departure, which it apparently did as it’s not be seen since.

It was only last month that my friend Tom Ference and I were on the Ohio River, motoring upriver from the mouth of the Beaver River to the boat ramp in Leets dale at the day’s conclusion.

Upriver I noticed a large white bird, and expected it to be a swan.

With what I suspect was a quizzical look on my face, I said to Tom, “that sure looked like a pelican.”

Tom, who was facing me to shield himself from the cold blast of the boat ride, saw it a few seconds later, and stated there was no doubt that it was a pelican.

That evening I learned that American while pelicans typically winter in coastal areas, though are known to do so as far north as St. Louis (on the Mississippi River).

Sometimes their migrations are blown off course by storms, which must have been what happened to this majestic individual. At any rate, I hope it got its internal compass straightened out, as it was last seen flying upriver on the Ohio.

The Saturday after Christmas was an unseasonably mild day, during which my friend Art Hamley and I were trying to kick up a grouse or two. We were hunting a bowl-shaped hillside, one that had been logged perhaps 10 years ago.

Now it’s a tangle of saplings, slashing and briers, nasty to hunt through but the stuff that provides grouse with both food and cover.

We’d been at it for around a half-hour when I thought I heard a grouse take out.

Art confirmed it, having seen the ruff flush well out of range.

He had a good line on its direction of flight, so rather than stay on our present course we made the 90 degree shift to follow up on it.

We’d just reached the area where Art felt the bird had landed when he called me over.

Broadcast over an area possibly 15 feet long was a swath of grouse feathers.

Apparently a nearby predator — and a more effective grouse hunter than us — had intercepted the bird shortly after it had landed.

Of course this is all speculation — it could have been a different bird preyed upon hours earlier — but that would have been quite a coincidence. In any event it shows why grouse often fly as a last resort; doing so exposes them to dangers of many sorts.

With the arrival of 2015 I started a new travel log. I don’t know what strange occurrences the year has in store, but if the past is any indicator, they will happen.

Jeff Knapp is a fishing columnist for the Butler Eagle.