Animal rescuers in San Francisco are trying to identify the origins of a mystery marmot believed to have hitched a ride to the city.
The Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue said on social media that the marmot, a rodent approximately the size of a house cat, was found this week in a Mission District backyard.
“Marmots are famous for climbing inside car undercarriages, drinking radiator fluid, passing out and waking up in far away weird places like San Francisco,” the post said.
Lila Travis, founder and director of the rescue, said radiator fluid smells appealing to marmots.
“They have a missing electrolyte that they think is going to be satisfied by this radiator fluid, but it’s not,” Travis told KQED. “It just makes them sick. And they will sometimes be transported to strange places because of the car being driven off.”
The engine coolant or the radiator fluid in most vehicles is largely made of two substances: water and ethylene glycol. When you mix the two, you end up with a liquid that has a freezing temperature far below where either would freeze on its own. That’s why it’s used in cars.
Ethylene glycol has a sweet taste, and that’s seemingly what’s attracting the animals. Unfortunately, a chewed-through coolant (or antifreeze) hose isn’t only a problem for you. Ethylene glycol is also highly toxic to animals, so drinking a tasty mouthful can lead to death due to severe, irreversible kidney failure.
Marmots typically live in high elevations, so the rescue group is trying to determine whether anyone living nearby where the rodent was found recently returned from Lake Tahoe or Burning Man.
Travis said that information will help rescuers return the animal home.
“We’re looking for someone who might recently have spent time in the alpine high Sierras — in marmot territory — and unwittingly brought this guy down. We just want to know where he came from originally, so that we can take him back to his family,” she said.
Content contributed by Ben Hooper, reported from San Francisco, California, USA, sourced by UPI.com
