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Scouts stone rabid beaver

David Pescovitz at 8:35 am Wed, Aug 15, 2012

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Boy Scout troop leader Norman Brousseau, 51, was swimming in the Delaware River in Pennsylvania when he was attacked by a rabid beaver. After the scouts pulled Brousseau to shore, they stoned the beaver until it was dead. From the Poughkeepsie Journal:

 Wikipedia Commons 6 6B American Beaver

The beaver bit him in the leg and then again in his buttocks, arm, hand and waist. At that point, Brousseau said, “the adrenaline kicked in.”

“I grabbed it in its mouth,” he said. “I had it around its bottom jaw as tightly as I could because I knew it was going to either bite me or bite the boys. I called the Scouts to come give me a hand.”

"Pine Plains scout leader attacked by rabid beaver"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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  • http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot

    Thank God the kids were all straight, otherwise they may have tried to nurse the beaver back to health so they could marry it.

    • Thad Boyd

      I thought the Scouts were ONLY okay with boys who were sexually attracted to beavers.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        Dam, you fine!

  • jaypee

    Not included in the article: The part where the band of scouts eventually turns on one of their own, nicknamed “Piggy”, and subjects him to the same fate.

  • bradalmanac

    Best out-of-context sentence of the article: ““then it started attacking the noodle.”

    Close second: “Who’d be crazy enough to hang onto a rabid beaver?”

  • Tribune

    How do they know the Beaver was rabid? The Poughkeepsie Journal wants me to subscribe before I can read about this momentous event.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=723148341 Lucy Gothro

       I know, I can’t even read the full article.

      • yadayada

         If you close the annoying popup you’ll be redirected to the main site. There you can do a search for ‘beaver boy scout’ (which is kind of an interesting concept, now that I think about it) and, eventually, you’ll find the article.

        If you want to hear how bad rabid animals can be, listen to this episode of This American Life.

    • http://profiles.google.com/stephen.schenck Stephen Schenck

       They didn’t when they killed it.

      “The day after the attack, Brousseau received a call from a doctor confirming the beaver had been rabid.”

      • Diogenes

         He might have said “rabbit”.

        • http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline

           surely a scout would know the difference.

      • GlyphGryph

        Since the only way to “know” is, in fact, to subject it to various tests, they couldn’t have known at the time. What they knew was that it was /behaving/ as if it was rabid – there could, conceivably, have been other causes, but not terribly likely, I’d think.

    • Petzl

       When a beaver attacks you like soviet russia, you know its rabid …

    • Mike

       I wouldn’t know a rabid beaver if it bit me in the ass.  Ohh…

    • CH

      I would assume they turned the dead beaver over for testing. Rabies testing is done by testing the brain tissue, so it cannot be done on a live animal.

  • http://www.thegeekwhisperer.com The Geek Whisperer

    Can we kindly not confuse kids with the often ignored policies of the parent organization. Boy Scouts of America is an unkind organization. That doesn’t mean that the kids are.

    This sounds like a crappy situation that most people wouldn’t know how to handle. 

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

      I’m more than happy to cut the kids, and, for that matter, the troop leader, some slack. Even though the Boy Scout motto is “Be prepared” an aggressive beaver is not something I think anyone would normally think to be prepared for. Stoning it to death sounds unnecessarily harsh, but for all of them it may have seemed like the safest option at the time.

      And, in the same situation, I’d take its behavior as a good indicator that there was something seriously wrong with it. That’s assuming, of course, that I’d be able to think rationally while being attacked by a beaver.

      • http://twitter.com/bigbadchang Chang Terhune

        Oh the titters I’m having over the whole article, let alone the phrase “aggressive beaver.”

        • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

          I thought about adding “insert your own joke here”, but decided that inserting anything into an aggressive beaver might be a bad idea.

          • http://deansli.st/ Dean Putney

            https://www.dropbox.com/s/vutqlanmnsu5fex/pogoeyeroll.gif?dl=1

      • Colin Curry

        Beavers can be pretty aggressive, like any wild animal if it feels cornered or threatened. There is a story about a beaver in BC going for some guy’s crotch.

        • hymenopterid

          I once knew a man from Vancouver
          who took an evasive maneuver
          When an aquatic rodent
          climbed up his raiment
          And went straight for his carrot and tuber

    • http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot

      Don’t forget the kids’ parents. 

    • jhoosier

       Who’s been making unkind comments about the boys?  Is this some preemptive complaint?

  • flappy

    I thought this kind of thing only happened in Iraq.

  • http://www.beaucomeaux.com bocomo

    It was just a gay beaver

  • http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

    All the kids were subsequently awarded a “Stoning Rabid Beaver” merit badge.

  • hakuin

    I hope this doesn’t lead to  lead to more beaver massacre by idiots concluding that every animal defending its turf is rabid. 

    • Diogenes

       Only if it’s a Muslim beaver.

  • http://www.woogieworld.org bwohlgemuth

    Did the beaver say Jehovah?

    • TrollyMcTrollington

       Look at the bones!

  • cbbb

    Ouch, TFA blocked by paywall.

  • http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

    I told you about that sharia bro

    I TOLD YOU ABOUT SHARIA

  • bjacques

    Hmm, attacks by badgers, by weasels and baboons, but no beavers.

    NOW IT CAN BE TOLD!!

  • Ramone

    So this proves once and for all that scouts will do anything to avoid a beaver.

  • http://echofox3.blogspot.com efergus3

    Hey, everyone – shots all around!

  • Mike

    Here in Colorado there’s been problems with rabid skunks.     No one is saying how to tell if a skunk is rabid…

  • Colin Curry

    Beavers. A greater risk than sharks AND cows?

    http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/science-technology/natural-science/general-9/beaver-attack.html

    • Cowicide

      I’ve been warning people for years that beavers are serious foes to humanity.  I’ve been threatened twice by beavers and that’s enough for me.

  • Ronald Pottol

    This sounds like the boy scouts I remember!

  • Nicole Isaac

    Dabnabit! It was Daggett Doofus Beaver method acting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLhXPjeIPaU

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Please stop linking to your blog in comments. You can link it to your profile.

  • Boundegar

    Thus the scouts upheld the commandment of Neuteronomy 14:10: “If a beaver biteth thy master, it is an abomination.  Thou shalt kill it with stones, sayeth the LORD.”

  • Lurking_Grue

    NICE BEAVER!

  • http://voidstar.com/ jbond

    Was it afraid of water?

  • Antinous / Moderator

    I thought that scouts were supposed to be prepared.  Didn’t anyone pack a beaver cleaver?

    • penguinchris

      I tried thinking of a joke about The Beaver (Cleaver) getting packed in a suitcase, but my mind took it to Eddie Haskell packing The Beaver to bring to the Jamboree where Haskell’s fellow scouts (who I presume are similarly slimy assholes) proceed to pack The Beaver, if you know what I mean. Heh, “slimy assholes”. 

  • http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline

    Im really not sure weather or not i should be outraged because of some tenuous animal cruelty loyalty.
    Thanks for the early morning ethical dilemma David
    D: