Marmot Infestation Update
It has been 10 months since I last posted anything about my ongoing war against marmots. The total trapped at the end of August last year was 187. We got off to a slow start this year, but in the past 4 weeks I have trapped an additional 15, bringing the grand total of marmots trapped and removed from my property to 202. And that is good news!
I am hoping it will be like MossRoad predicted: I may eventually get control of the population. The rate of capture is way down compared to previous years; at one point I was trapping 75-80 marmots a year. I doubt it will ever reach a level of full control, but only 15 in 4 weeks is amazing. As long as I have a tall basalt cliff rising up in my front and an even taller cliff dropping off to my back, I will always have marmots looking at my literally greener pastures.
An interesting result of the constant trapping is that many of this year’s crop appear to be young’uns, much smaller than prior years. I did have an episode of hand-to-hand combat with a giant boar marmot who decided he would rather fight than run. He was sampling my garden so I ran toward him, expecting him to run: after all, they are just big ground squirrels. Instead, he moved toward me and rose up on his rear-end, emitting a sound like a mixture of growl and chirp. It was a strange event.
When I moved to this property, I never dreamed I would be battling marmots, gophers and starlings for control of my harvest. Still, as my daughter-in-law said, it is better than fighting an infant’s pee and poop and a toddler’s finicky diet.
