Marmot named Fork clings to bottom of car for 600 miles, ends up in Arizona, video shows

When an Arizona woman snapped a photo of an animal she’d never seen before, she probably didn’t expect the invasive critter to be such an adventurer.

The creature was a curious and “globetrotting” marmot that hitched a ride under a car for 10 hours to travel 600 miles from Colorado to Arizona in June.

“A Valley resident spotted an animal she’d never seen before and contacted Arizona Game and Fish,” the department said on Facebook. “Turns out a yellow-bellied marmot had somehow hitched a ride all the way from the mountains of Crested Butte, Colorado, to the desert of Glendale, Arizona, a 600-mile road trip.”

Marmots are members of the squirrel family and can be about 2 feet long, according to the National Park Service. They’re used to high elevation and cold environments.

Wildlife officials discovered an ear tag on the marmot that signaled it was part of a research plan. The animal was part of a decades-long study at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory on marmots.

The ear tag also revealed that the marmot’s name was Fork, and she had a marmot family in Colorado, wildlife officials said.

Arizona wasn’t going to be a new home for Fork because marmots like cold climates. She wouldn’t do well in the extreme Phoenix heat, wildlife officials said.

Instead, officials rushed to reunite Fork with her family and research group in the Colorado mountains. Fork was reunited with her brother, Spoon, and 22 other marmot pups, wildlife officials said.

“Knowing her history and the importance of what she plays into the research here in Colorado,” Sharon Lashway of Arizona Game and Fish Department said in a video. “That’s what really triggered me into making sure we got her back to Colorado as quickly as possible.”

This story was originally published July 21, 2021 at 10:23 AM with the headline "Marmot named Fork clings to bottom of car for 600 miles, ends up in Arizona, video shows."