Guest arrives for unscheduled Marmot Lodge

Apparently someone didn’t get the word that there was no Marmot Lodge meeting Thursday morning. But all’s well that ends well. A team of Spokesman-Review security and facilities maintenance personnel successfully apprehended and relocated an adult marmot discovered in the courtyard behind the Review Tower shortly before 7 o’clock. At one point before the humane capture, the good-sized rodent was observed checking out columnist Paul Turner’s parked bicycle. Turner, head of the newspaper readers’ Marmot Lodge, encouraged the animal to return to Riverfront Park or wherever it had come from. But when it appeared that the marmot might be intending to scamper out into busy traffic on Sprague Avenue, it was the newspaper’s security and facilities staff that stepped in and caught the critter with a fishing net. After being transferred to a tall, plastic barrel, the marmot was walked to a spot behind the Spokane Club and released on a hillside above the Spokane River. The actual date of the next scheduled lodge meeting is Aug. 3, 2012.