News from the front lines of the never-ending war between cars and rodents: Marmots are a menace (in general, apparently) and are tragically addicted to antifreeze. People who park in marmot country have taken to making giant tarp diapers for their cars to keep the critters from chewing into coolant lines. It is an unfortunate situation all around, but it makes for a pretty funny visual.
People driving around the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks areas are urged to pack giant tarps to park on, which they’re then folding up and holding in place to create a defense shield of tarpaulin between their engines and the animals.
This WSJ video and article about marmots “terrorizing California hikers and stealing their shoes” describes an escalating conflict between marmots and the humans who come visit their habitats. It’s making the rounds because the idea of a creature that looks like the Buc-ee’s mascot with “yellow-bellied” in its name being “dangerous” is silly, and the image of cars wrapped bottom-up like ballpark hot dogs is weird.
The WSJ story just came out, but this is not a new phenomenon—the National Park Service already has a “Marmots – Protecting Your Vehicle” page explaining how to set up the tarp system we’re talking about here. I had actually never heard of this (I even lived in Mono County, CA for a while), but heck, it made local news rounds more than a decade ago, too:
Marmots with a taste for torque
Like many silly news stories, this becomes less cute and more sad if you spend two whole seconds thinking about it. Of course marmots are becoming more aggressive—more and more people are encroaching on their space, and from the looks of the video, doing dumb things like feeding them. The animal attraction to antifreeze isn’t their fault, either. In fact, it’s not even limited to marmots. Many creatures find the smell of engine coolant appealing, including dogs, which is why it’s extremely important to clean up coolant spills right away if you have a shop dog.
And, yeah, it’s funny to picture a giant rodent drunk on something that looks like Mountain Dew. But consuming ethylene glycol actually leads to quick kidney failure and death.
I have a hypothesis as to why it’s a particularly big problem in these high-elevation places. Driving to Sequoia or Kings Canyon National Park involves sustained high-load, low-speed driving as people come up from the coast or inland. That’s a lot of strain on a cooling system, creating a higher probability of leaks. Even if a cooling system is solid, it can burp out excess coolant (by design) through an overflow tube. Cars that had just driven to Sequoia National Park from San Francisco or LA would be more likely to drip out a little coolant than a vehicle just roaming around town. I bet that’s happening, and the marmots are unable to resist the wafting coolant smell—to them, an expansion line is like a beer tap.
With that in mind, it makes sense that this diaper defense actually would be effective, especially if you set it up quickly. Obviously, a marmot could chew through a tarp—have you seen the teeth on those things? But with the tarp in place, the coolant could potentially get caught and be more isolated from the environment. If the coolant smell is kept from emanating into the woods, marmots won’t want to bother with the car in the first place.
So if you’re parking in marmot country, like the rural parts of California near Mineral King, you really do need to defend your machine from marmots! Marmots drinking coolant means dead animals and non-functional cars; big ol’ lose-lose right there.
Got any good protect-car-from-critters tips? I need all the help I can get—mice are always eating my cars. Drop me a line at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.
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