A marmot is a ground squirrel, and indeed they very much resemble their tree-dwelling cousins. Only bigger, fatter, and a less bushy tail that sticks out straight instead of curling into an “S” shape. Many varieties are found all over the world, but today we’re zeroing in on Marmota flaviventer, the yellow-bellied marmot of southwestern Canada and the western US. These rodents are terrorizing hikers in California! Humans visiting Sequoia National Park are reporting skirmishes in which marmots steal equipment, and then let out a piercing screech and chase people who try to get their stuff back. The marmots are also wreaking havoc on cars left in parking lots, chewing through the undersides, sometimes to the point of rendering a vehicle inoperable. Hikers are being advised to cover their cars with tarps; not that the marmots can’t chew their way through the material, they easily can. But the tarps work as a visual deterrent. The Wall Street Journal just published an article on the “criminal masterminds” instigating marmotgeddon:

Marmot Country: Andrew Reinhart was so tired after hiking up a mountain pass last month, he laid down for a nap—only to wake to a wet tongue on his ear. A marmot stared back. “It scared the s— out of me,” said the 28-year-old engineer from Livermore, Calif. “You don’t expect to get licked when you go to sleep in the woods.” Welcome to Sequoia National Park, also known as Marmot Country. Yellow-bellied marmots are stalking hikers and campers in a park more famous for its namesake giant trees. They snatch backpacks, swipe shoes and nibble on trekking poles. Some even chase humans. … Nitin Gupta, 31, watched a “quite big” marmot steal his hiking pole—then charge his girlfriend when she tried to retrieve it. “I heard this almost war cry,” the San Francisco founder recalled. They surrendered the pole.

Cars are their prey: But what has really put Sequoia on the marmot-shenanigans map is their all-out assault on the parking lots bordering trailheads in the Mineral King Valley—one of the wildest parts of the park. Here, marmots crawl inside vehicles to chew hoses and lap up fluid, sometimes disabling cars. One unlucky hiker paid more than $1,000 for a tow down the narrow, 23-mile mountain road after a marmot attack. Ironically, the underside of his Subaru had been covered with a tarp like a diaper—a relatively new line of defense against the cute but destructive rodents, which belong to the ground-squirrel family but are as big as small dogs. “There must have been a hole somewhere,” reckoned Joe McManus, the tow operator, of the tarp breach.

Beyond California: Marmot mayhem has also hit other parts of the West, including Colorado. Julie Jensen’s friend screamed when one bit his hand atop a peak. The marmot “would not move, no matter how loudly we yelled,” said Jensen, 56. “He gave serious honey badger vibes.” One Colorado marmot sneaked into a car and hitched a ride to Arizona, prompting a call to Dan Blumstein, a marmot expert from the University of California, Los Angeles who heads a research project on the critters in that state. “They say, ‘this is one of your marmots, it has an ear tag,’” recalled Blumstein. The creature, nicknamed “Fork,” for its fur mark, was flown home in a state plane. “We refer to it as Fork Kardashian,” he said.

Human stuff just tastes so good! Many marmot problems appear to revolve around their appetite for salt, which they find on sweat-stained hiking poles and backpack straps as well as radiator fluid, said Blumstein, an ecology and evolutionary biology professor. Sequoia’s Mineral King Valley has become such a hot spot for marmot car invasions that the National Park Service warns “You Are Entering Marmot Country.” Trail parking lots there sit next to a boulder-strewn meadow where marmot mothers nurse their young in burrows, making nearby cars irresistible targets, said park spokeswoman Holly Streit.

[From WSJ]

“You don’t expect to get licked when you go to sleep in the woods.” Really? You’re bunking for the night in the home of a whole ecosystem of species. I’d think it would be a rarer occurrence if you didn’t make contact with another critter! But what do I know, I’m a city mouse. Not being very educated in marmotology, I did a little research that proved quite fascinating. Hikers are encountering yellow-bellied marmots now because it’s summer, but these guys spend most of their lives in burrows. Their hibernation period lasts from September to May. And unlike their squirrel cousins storing nuts in trees, marmots don’t store any food for the winter (which, again, in their case includes fall and spring). Instead, marmots spend their active season (summer) eating to build up enough fat for the whole rest of the year. And what does this “active” season include, aside from eating and taunting humans? Grooming, sunning, and more burrowing. You guys… I am a marmot trapped in the body of a human!! It all adds up: a love of salt, burrowing at home most of the year, lounging in the sun and counting it as an activity, winning arguments with a shrill shriek, eating a year’s worth of food in one moment. This is me! Team marmot, all the way!

Photos credit: Raphael Loquellano, Bryan Smith, Vasilis Karkalas on Pexels, YS on Unsplash