{"id":458899,"date":"2026-09-10T02:50:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T02:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/458899\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T02:50:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T02:50:20","slug":"san-francisco-wildlife-rescue-searches-for-origin-of-mystery-marmot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/458899\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco Wildlife Rescue Searches for Origin of Mystery Marmot"},"content":{"rendered":"

A yellow-bellied marmot likely hitched a ride to San Francisco with someone returning recently from Lake Tahoe or Burning Man, wildlife experts said.<\/p>\n

Sep 9, 2026<\/p>\n

Updated 1:40 pm PT<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A yellow-bellied marmot at the Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue in Potrero Hill on Sept. 9, 2026. The rescue is asking the public to help identify the original home of the marmot, who Mission District residents found earlier this week. \u00a0(Courtesy of Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue)<\/p>\n

A San Francisco<\/a> wildlife refuge is searching for clues about the origin of a striped stowaway \u2014 a yellow-bellied marmot, found in the Mission District this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lila Travis, founder and director of the Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue in Potrero Hill, said San Francisco Animal Care and Control received calls from neighbors on Albion Street near 16th Street, who spotted the marmot, a type of chunky, golden-chested ground squirrel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine,\u201d Travis said, \u201cThese are cat-sized, giant rodents. And they love to eat flowers. So it must have been a very bizarre experience to go out into your backyard and see this unusual rodent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marmots \u2014 the largest in the squirrel family \u2014 typically live in burrows in mountainous, rocky habitats, like in the eastern Sierra or Tahoe. As true hibernators, marmots spend all summer packing on fat for the long winter, sometimes reaching up to 15 pounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The critters are known, she said, for staking out parking lots near parks and camping sites to crawl under car hoods and dine on wires, brake lines and radiator hoses \u2014 looking for a fix of salt and sweet, sticky antifreeze.<\/p>\n

\"\"A pen at the Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue in Potrero Hill on Sept. 9, 2026. The rescue is stabilizing and taking care of a yellow-bellied marmot who stowed away to San Francisco. \u00a0(Courtesy of Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue)<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have a missing electrolyte that they think is going to be satisfied by this radiator fluid, but it\u2019s not,\u201d Travis said. \u201cIt just makes them sick. And they will sometimes be transported to strange places because of the car being driven off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Travis is reaching out<\/a> to the public to investigate how the marmot got here. The center put out a call on social media to find residents in the area who may have returned recently from Lake Tahoe or Burning Man, and may have passed through high elevations, with the marmot in tow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI just came back from Black Rock City,\u201d one person wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. \u201cMy only stop was to sleep at a gas station before I jumped onto Hwy 80. Was very early morning and I slept for three hours. I\u2019m at 17th & Dolores and my car has been parked here since 10am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Travis said if the center can\u2019t track down the source, she\u2019ll request a transfer to the Tahoe Wildlife Center, which will know a good location to release the marmot.<\/p>\n

Today, the 100% volunteer- and donation-funded refuge operates out of foster homes all over the Bay Area, with an on-site facility on Potrero Hill. Travis said she\u2019s hoping to expand its footprint with a bigger space, potentially in partnership with the Port of San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember, this is the city of San Francisco, named after Saint Francis, the patron saint of animals,\u201d Travis said. \u201cWe think that what we do, wildlife rehabilitation, and having compassion towards animals is an important way that we can contribute to San Francisco and the world in general.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A yellow-bellied marmot likely hitched a ride to San Francisco with someone returning recently from Lake Tahoe or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-458899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}