Almost two weeks ago I published a piece indicating my concerns about the marmot colony in one of our nearby parks. You can take a look at it here. The gist is that I became quite unsettled about the degree to which the marmots were being fed, to the point that I was approached by one of them who begged for food.

That was very unusual behaviour. Up until a few weeks ago, the marmots had always scurried away when humans had come too close, but suddenly, people had started giving them a lot of food: bags of carrots, cucumbers, lettuce and other treats including nuts and berries.

Granted, these were healthy foods for the marmots, but the amount of it was causing ancillary problems: they were gaining weight, were losing their ability to forage for themselves and worst of all, were losing their fear of humans.

People were hand feeding them and the marmots were sitting on their laps, running over their shoulders and necks and the small ones were even climbing into their pockets. Now, marmots are very cute but they’re also wild animals; they carry ticks, fleas and sometimes, rabies.

Most people I know wouldn’t want to deal with the possibility of rocky mountain spotted fever, lime disease, bubonic plague, tapeworms or rabies, but marmots can potentially transmit all of these – or the pests – fleas and ticks – that also carry these diseases and live on the marmots.

Nope, humans being illogical humans, we believe that if it’s cute, it’s harmless. Or that it’s okay to feed wild animals because, well, we’re doing them a favour. Right?

So I decided that a visit to the city was warranted, and I learned that lots of other people have the same concerns as me, and that the city had decided that a warning sign was required.

And here it is (actually, there are two of them, one at each end of the marmot colony). Does it help to go to city hall? Yes, in this case it certainly did! I’m happy to report that these sweet little animals are back to feeding themselves, minimising our interaction with them and ensuring that they won’t be moved from their home or – worst of all – euthanised – because a child has been bitten or an adult has developed lime disease.

I wish the marmots long life and health and to us, many more years of marmot viewing pleasure – from a distance, that is.

Happy Saturday.