The Little Marmots

My tiny student demands to look at the "Marmot" book before her nap. I'm surprised that she knows about these North American mammals. Of course I was equally surprised when she counted all the glittery spots on her princess t-shirt in clear non-native English, and when she was able to name all the colors in English.



I'd never heard of marmots until I encountered a colony of the fat, chirping mammals at an abandoned mine in the San Juan National Forest above Durango, Colorado on a newlywed backpacking trip. Their sound was eerie, and they were clustered around every rock and inside every decaying outhouse on the Kennebec Pass trail.

According to the Colorado Division of Wildlife, marmots are fat, grizzled, waddling relatives of ground squirrels and woodchucks. They are social animals of the alpine meadows employing a system of alarm calls against predators. It is easy to see how they might be mistaken for mermaids!



My student actually wants the book about Disney's mermaid Ariel. She isn't interested in driving up the rutted Forest Service road to the trailhead, and probably won't knock the oil pan off the underside of her puke yellow Chevy Nova driving back down to civilization after her hike.





In an equally confusing moment, two year-old Danger Baby demanded "the 'care book" before naptime from his grandmother while I was in the hospital with his new baby brother. Mom looked everywhere for a Care Bears book, but Danger Baby really wanted Dr. Seuss's story about the pale green pants, "What Was I Scared Of?," in The Sneetches and Other Stories. I bet pudgy, chirping, little marmots in pale green pants would make a heckuva children's video!




© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder