FILE PHOTO - A marmot has its face stuffed full in Kamloops.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED / Lyn MacDonald
July 24, 2025 - 7:00 AM
It took almost 24 hours for a Kamloops resident and busy mother to get a marmot out of her car engine a few days ago.
The marmot scurried under the hoods of a few cars in the neighbourhood before it planted itself firmly in Jennilee Fraser’s engine and no amount of banging on the car would scare it away.
“It hunkered down and decided not to leave,” she said. “We tried getting our dog out there to scare it but it didn’t help."
Even their cats couldn't convince the marmot to leave.
No one could get a hand up high enough to reach the top of the engine and pull the marmot out.
“We couldn’t even see it but knew it was there because every time we’d bang around in there it would start chirping,” Fraser said.
She checked the internet and found one suggestion was to leave the hood open, walk away for awhile and the marmot would leave on its own.
She drove the car to a nearby walking trail, parked and opened up the hood. There she stayed for more than an hour playing loud music, honking the horn, and turning the engine on and off trying to scare the critter out.
She called her mom.
“I said I need help. I have this marmot stuck in my engine, so she came up with my stepdad. We’d jacked up the car to try to get at it from the underside and I sprayed peppermint essential oils around the engine to try and stink it out.”
Fraser closed everything up and left for three hours, returning after supper and the marmot was still there. She took the car back home and went to Home Depot to buy a trap she baited with food to put next to the car.
The next morning, the marmot was still there.
“I kicked my wheel housing and heard it chirp and then I was super frustrated,” Fraser said. “We called animal control who said they can’t help us and pest control who said they don’t deal with marmots. We called a couple of mechanics and even the SPCA who was so busy they couldn’t even take my call.
“I didn’t want it to die but I didn’t want it to damage my engine and I wanted my car back."
Fraser’s husband Nigel Beardwood took the car to a car wash and hit the engine with a pressure washer. After that no more chirping sounds could be heard, so the couple followed up at a Mr. Lube on the North Shore to see if the critter was finally gone.
“The real hero of this story is Mr. Lube,” Beardwood said. “They said no problem and removed the undercarriage to make sure it was gone. They didn’t charge us or question us and said it’s just part of the service. We got lucky it didn’t chew through any wires.”
In spring and summer marmots have a feeding frenzy to fatten up for the coming winter and need denning locations close to food sources, according to Critter Control. Yards and gardens provide food for them while many parts of the car provide shelter including the engine bay and wheel wells. The marmots chew on wires, hoses and air conditioning.
Pete Wise runs Wise Wildlife Control Services in Coldstream and gets called out to remove marmots from car engines roughly half a dozen times every spring and summer.
“It is very common and people get carried away doing different things trying to get them out of there but there is a simple solution,” he said. “Park the car somewhere safe and open the hood. If you don’t open it, he’ll go on top of the motor, start pulling the headliner out of the hood, make a nest and start chewing on the wires.
“Just open that hood and leave it. Don’t look at, don’t peek at it, keep your pets in, leave it alone and it’ll move on. It takes time and patience.”
Fraser said her family now has a funny story to tell and suggests anyone in a similar predicament go to an oil change business for help.
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