Fur Could Fly Over Reno’s Marmots

Every so often, a town faces a showdown that can rip a community apart. It can get pretty ugly. Outrage, name-calling . . . next thing you know, townspeople go to war, lining up against one another on the streets, pointing fingers at city council meetings, punching their next-door neighbors in the nose.

Reno is just such a town.

I hate to see this kind of thing happen to such a nice place, but the Biggest Little City in the World, as Reno sees itself, is embroiled in a battle that could divide Reno’s residents into two camps--one of them pro-death.

And the fur could fly.

You see, there’s a fine $15-million shopping center in town that is fairly new.

Businesses have been popping up, left and right. Barnes & Noble is scheduled to open another of its big bookstores at this Reno mall very soon.

But there’s a glitch.

Neither Barnes nor his pal Noble wants to have little animals with sharp teeth running around the store after hours.

Somebody has to stop the marmots.

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Yes, poor Reno has a serious marmot problem. A marmot is a woodchuck, a mouse with a glandular condition, an extra large rodent with a furry hide and a short, bushy tail.

It likes to burrow into things and gnaw its way out, much like a pesky beaver or a media member at a free lunch.

Reno’s new shopping plaza, for some reason, has been attracting marmots. They keep taking up residence there. They are turning the whole mall into the Chateau Marmot.

Dozens of them first turned up there in late 1998. No one knows why. . . . It’s Nevada, so maybe they were holding a convention.

At least 75 marmots were found. Now, I have seen some strange looking creatures at the mall, but most of them usually had only two legs and were shopping for CDs.

Anyway, a guy from a Texas-based company that developed the shopping center told Reno’s Planning Commission he didn’t know why this little corner of Nevada suddenly became home to the Marmot Pack.

But he did have the solution:

Gas.

A little poison gas could go a long way when you’ve got 75 marmots running loose at night, sneaking into a pet store to raid the doggy and kitty chow supply. Marmots are hungry varmints. They’ll eat you out of house and mall.

Unfortunately for the man from Texas, a woman from Nevada thought this was a terrible idea. Gas a marmot? No way. Over her dead body. There will be no marmot murder, she wrote.

So, Sherrie Doyle and the rest of Reno’s city planners persuaded John Krmpotic and his fellow mall developers to hold a big marmot roundup. Don’t gas them . . . trap them. Round ‘em up and ride ‘em right on out of town, like “Rawhide.”

And how do you trap a marmot?

With cheese?

Uh, no. It seems that what worked best in luring the little rascals out of hiding was an irresistible trap filled with--I am not making this up--peanut butter and broccoli.

Well, folks, those 75 critters were indeed herded together thanks to a tasty PB & B snack and run out of Reno with everything but a trail boss and a chuck wagon behind them.

And Reno’s troubles were over.

Until recently, that is. Because it appears that marmots--which hibernate during the winter, same as bears and baseball players--just love this Reno mall.

I don’t know why. Maybe there’s a new PetCo with a wonderful variety of rodent play toys. Or maybe they want to be first in line when Barnes & Noble opens, in time for the next John Grisham book. I hear marmots love Grisham more than broccoli.

Whatever the reason, they’re back.

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So what should Reno do? Barnes & Noble’s move to the mall was conditional to that rodent pack being chased away in ’98.

The project manager, Krmpotic, says if you want to poison a rat, nobody says a word. “But marmots are cute rats,” he says.

Doyle, meanwhile, a city councilwoman now, still objects to anybody “dropping the bomb” on Reno’s marmot community.

Something has to give. Marmots reproduce like rabbits. They could multiply and overrun Reno, sleeping on blackjack tables and roulette wheels.

I say, round ‘em up one more time. Unless it comes down to three strikes. Then you can send them to that big marmot mall in the sky.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com