I've never had to deal with critters getting into my stuff, and never had one mess with my car at the trailhead either. I did watch hundreds of chipmunks devour an entire families food at a campsite in the Sequoia NF once. That's really a pretty good story, but I think I've told it here already so I'll let it pass this time.

We have marmots here in the Ozarks, but we call them "Groundhogs". They're generally very shy around people, it's not uncommon to see them crossing a road though. I got chased by one in Illinois once after poking a stick in its burrow, but it let me get a safe distance away and then quit. It's almost hard to believe they'd be chewing up car parts. There must not be much else around for them to eat if they get to that point. I would think that if one could trap a few around those trailheads it wouldn't take long to end the problem. Does the FS have a problem with that out there?

The more I hear these kind of things the more I believe that the difference between how bears and other critters, as related to how they interact with humans out West and here in the Ozarks, must be a result of how humans interact with them differently in these areas. I know for sure that if a groundhog was chewing up cars here at a trailhead it wouldn't be long before someone put a stop to it, and they wouldn't consult the FS either, it would just be stopped.

I met a guy who deep fried one at a Bluegrass festival in Kentucky and it went so fast it was gone before word got around about it. That probably had a lot to do with the novelty of the dish and the moonshine that night, but it's true

Jim, on a backpacking forum dedicated to Arkansas I recently offered the advice that hikers start getting more aggressive with a black bear that's been seen around a popular campsite along a trail in the Ouachitas. I told them they'd better start chasing it off and that I'd be yelling and tossing rocks at any black bear that hung around me too long. No one followed up on that. It felt like they all wanted to see the bear up close and refrained from supporting that advice. That's too bad because the bear will probably be shot after getting too aggressive with a hiker there. But that's not the Ozarks. It's different even there, and that's not that far away, or different (geographically speaking) than here. It's a cultural thing. Ozarkers will hunt and kill a bear, and they'll eat one too.

W_D, I'm sure if you beaned a marmot upside its head with a nice sized rock it'd be a lot more reluctant to hang around much longer. Crack its noggin with two or three and it'll find a new place to look for food. Deep fry one and I know it won't bother you anymore.

Maybe all you need out there is some Bluegrassers getting together with a jug of shine