Hiker’s dashboard lights up after trip in Canada. Surprise intruder left him laughing

Vincent Bouchard recently took a backpacking trip with his two daughters in Alberta’s Jasper National Park.

When the trio made it back to their car around 3 p.m. to make the long journey back home to Edmonton, they were “tired but very happy,” Bouchard wrote in a June 5 Facebook post. That’s when something peculiar happened.

“I start driving, all kinds of lights start flashing on my dashboard. Transmission, ABS, hand brake, oil temp, check engine, it’s all flashing,” he wrote.

Bouchard said he kept driving to a better stopping place before checking on the car. He wanted to make sure he could get off the gravel road onto a more accessible road and where he would hopefully have better cell service.

Once he made it onto the 93A highway, Bouchard stopped his car and got out to look around. He didn’t notice anything suspicious — until he opened his car’s hood.

“I’m just shocked,” Bouchard told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “There was a big marmot right there on my engine just looking at me. Seemed perfectly happy.”

Bouchard said he immediately started laughing, according to his Facebook post.

“I just drove 8km down the road with a marmot in my engine compartment,” he wrote. “I couldn’t stop laughing.”

Marmots are giant ground squirrels found mostly in North America and Eurasia, according to Britannica. They can grow to be between about 12 to 24 inches long and can weigh between around 6 and 15 pounds.

The rodents thrive in cold environments, and they whistle and burrow when they feel threatened.

After discovering the sneaky intruder, Bouchard said he tried to find a way to get the creature out of his car. He started by grabbing a nearby stick and trying to poke the marmot off his engine.

That only made matters worse: the critter went into defense mode and burrowed beneath the car’s engine, according to Bouchard.

“It doesn’t want to move,” Bouchard wrote. “I poke it from all directions, above, sideways, under the hood, nothing makes it move, it just keeps whistling, making it clear that it’s not very happy with my poking.”

As Bouchard worked to get the marmot out of his car, passing cars began stopping to help him, including a park warden, he said. The warden got to work, pouring cool water on the critter before trying to poke him out from under the engine.

One passerby offered a sandwich to try to bribe the marmot out, but even that was a failed attempt, according to Bouchard. After an hour of trying to remove the marmot, the warden called in backup from Parks Canada.

Using a collar attached to a long pole, park officials were able to get the marmot out of the vehicle and into a container, Bouchard wrote.

“Apparently this is not the first time it happens, [the official] said it happened once last year, and also a few years ago as well. Entertaining for sure,” Bouchard said.

After removing the critter though, Bouchard noticed that some dashboard warnings were still on, he wrote. A quick visit to the mechanic revealed that the marmot had chewed through a wire that impacted the transmission, but luckily it was easily fixed with a patch.

“We made it back to Edmonton around 11pm....with an epic story to tell,” Bouchard wrote. “I had told Malika and Manu that the weekend would be an adventure...it certainly was!!”

Jasper National Park is about 500 miles northeast of Vancouver.

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