Scouts stone rabid beaver

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:

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: