A pair of marmots have mysteriously appeared in busy Bay Area cities, baffling experts as to how the mountain-dwelling rodents turned up there.
Marmots are furry herbivores that generally live burrows in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
The most recent one was discovered in Antioch on Sept. 10 — with officials believing the animal hitched a ride on a car traveling from the mountains to the city.
The previous marmot was discovered on Sept. 4 at the Mission District in San Francisco and is now recovering at an animal rescue center.
“Unbelievably, a second yellow-bellied marmot was spotted (loitering) at a job site in Antioch,” Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue said on social media.
The center added that the Antioch marmot is doing well.
“The marmot has been safely captured and is now recovering at our wildlife center as we try to discover its origin story,” the animal rescue wrote.
The center added that they it is trying to get both marmots back to their homes.
A spokesperson for the center told KRON4 that it was one of the “stranger cases” rescuers have handled.
Marmots sometimes crawl into the underside of vehicles and consume radiator fluid, which can cause them to lose consciousness. They may wake up after the vehicle has traveled, leaving them stranded far from where they started.
The latest marmot likely traveled from a mountainous region close to Lake Tahoe after the Labor Day weekend, according to Antioch Animals Services.
“If you happen to have returned to the Delta Fair Blvd area of Antioch near the Pittsburg end in the last few days please reach out to us with your weekend location so we can potentially have this marmot return to its home,” Antioch Animals Services wrote on Facebook.
Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue also said that the animals might have hid away in cars that were getting back from the Burning Man festival in Nevada. The festival attracted thousands, including many attendees from the Bay Area.
The rescue urged people who were in the Lake Tahoe area around Sept. 4 , especially those returning from Burning Man, to inspect their vehicles for any wildlife that may have hitched a ride.
