Have a marmot in your engine? It's more common than you might think

When Williams Lake's Devin Rushton saw a marmot scamper into the undercarriage of her 2007 Mazda last week, she immediately ran out to try to get the critter away from the vehicle.

That's because this is not the first time she has had one under her hood.

The first time was last July.

At the time, the rodent had snuck up into her engine, and she spent more than an hour and a half trying to coax and scare it out of the engine compartment.

"I was like poking him with a stick, like, 'Come on buddy, get out, get out,' and nothing," she told Daybreak Kamloops host Doug Herbert. 

WATCH | Marmot sits in engine compartment of Williams Lake car:

She even called her dad to help with the rodent's removal.

Eventually, after many unsuccessful attempts to dislodge it, the marmot ended up running away in a quiet moment.

The second time around, the marmot left Rushton's vehicle after a few minutes, but it turns out her experience isn't all that unusual.

Urban wildlife specialist and Wise Wildlife Control Service owner Pete Wise said he's averaging two to three calls a week from people in the Interior who have a marmot in their vehicles.

"It happens a lot."

According to Wildsafe B.C., there are four species in BC: the hoary marmot, the yellow-bellied marmot, the critically endangered Vancouver Island marmot and the woodchuck.

Yellow-bellied marmots have significant populations in the Interior of B.C. Because of that, it's one of the rodent species that most often run into human-wildlife conflict because their ranges overlap with cities.

Wise said they are looking for summer dens and end up in vehicles as a temporary refuge when they are looking around for feeding and denning sites.