A yellow-bellied marmot — a stout, cat-sized rodent that has no business anywhere near sea level — turned up this month in a backyard on Albion Street in San Francisco's Mission District, several hundred miles from the alpine terrain it calls home. Wildlife workers say the most likely explanation is also the strangest: the animal probably crawled into the engine compartment of a car parked near Lake Tahoe or Nevada's Burning Man festival and rode the rest of the way without its driver ever noticing.
The marmot is now being cared for by Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue, a Potrero Hill-based rescue group whose director, Lila Travis, said the group is trying to trace exactly where the animal came from. Marmots are known for climbing under vehicle hoods to gnaw on wiring, hoses and belts, and are drawn in particular to antifreeze and radiator fluid, which Travis said appeals to them because of an electrolyte their bodies are otherwise missing — even though the fluid can make them sick. Riding beneath a car's undercarriage, a marmot can be carried hundreds of miles before it is discovered, if it is discovered at all.
Not a one-off hitchhiker
This was not an isolated incident. A second yellow-bellied marmot was found days earlier at a job site in Antioch, roughly 45 miles away, and was captured safely by volunteers with the same rescue network, according to wire reports. Local outlets including SFist noted that Bay Area rescues periodically field calls about mountain wildlife that has stowed away in vehicles returning from the Sierra Nevada, though two marmot cases surfacing in the same stretch of days is unusual even by those standards.
The rescue has asked the public for help identifying the marmot's point of origin, appealing specifically to anyone who drove back from the Lake Tahoe area or Burning Man in the Nevada desert around early September and might want to check under their hood. Travis has also suggested that people making that drive consider "marmot-proofing" their cars afterward — inspecting the engine bay for chew marks or wrapping exposed wheel wells — before heading back into the mountains.
If no owner or clear point of origin turns up, the plan is to transfer the marmot to the Tahoe Wildlife Center, which is better equipped to release it back into suitable alpine habitat rather than attempting a release near sea level, where the species would not survive.
