A Kananaskis Marmot Hitched a Ride to Airdrie. Now She’s Back Home

An Airdrie family had an unexpected guest stow away under their truck on the way back from Kananaskis at the end of July, but the guest has been returned home after a brief city adventure.

The female hoary marmot, which has been made a local celebrity this month (including a mention by Axl Rose at a Guns ’n’ Roses concert in Toronto), has been returned safely to Kananaskis by the Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society.

Chris Ratzlaff, an Airdrie landscape photographer, first discovered the creature in his garage when his son told him ‘there’s a brown fuzzy creature in our garage.’ Once it came out of hiding, they were able to identify it as a marmot, which Ratzlaff assumes must have climbed into their vehicle’s skid plate below the engine when his wife was out hiking Ptarmigan Cirque on July 28. 

“It was rummaging around in the garage knocking things over,” said Ratzlaff by email. 

They let it out and it wandered around the neighbourhood for a few days, with a few neighbours reporting sightings, before coming back to Ratzlaff’s garage on August 1.

“(My) only guess is that it recognized the garage as a safe place and it's arrival point to Airdrie, and maybe where it could get a ride home,” said Ratzlaff.

While Ratzlaff says it has been a fun story to tell, once it was back in the garage, he called Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society, and they were able to capture the fuzzy hitchhiker by cornering it with nets in his garage. They also told Ratzlaff that it’s a good idea to bang on the hood and fenders to scare and pop the hood to check the engine compartment to make sure you don’t have any extra creatures on board.

According to the Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society website marmots hitching a ride on a car is a common occurrence because they are curious and attracted to the minerals found on cars.