- A 55-pound rabid beaver attacked a girl while she was swimming in Georgia.
- To protect his daughter, her father had to kill the beaver using blunt-force trauma.
- Authorities confirmed that the beaver wasn’t trying to protect any nearby baby beavers.
A girl swimming in a Georgia lake was viciously attacked by a large, rabid beaver on Saturday evening.
Fortunately, her father came to her rescue and was forced to fatally strike the beaver, according to authorities interviewed by local outlet WDUN-AM.
The beaver latched onto the girl’s leg while she was swimming on private property in Lake Lanier, near Gainesville. The incident was reported by Hall County Animal Control field supervisor Kevin Beucker.
The investigating game warden described the beaver as the largest he had ever seen, weighing an estimated 50 to 55 pounds; the typical size for beavers in Georgia. The information was provided by DNR Wildlife Resources Supervisor Don McGowan in an interview with WSB-TV.
The girl’s father intervened and used blunt-force trauma to kill the attacking beaver. The identities of the girl and her father have not been disclosed.
Authorities confirmed that there were no baby beavers nearby that the attacking beaver could have been protecting.
The beaver’s carcass was tested at the Georgia Public Health Lab and it tested positive for rabies, as reported by WDUN-AM.
According to local wildlife biologists interviewed by WSB-TV, beaver attacks are rare in the area. The last incident at Lake Lanier occurred 13 years ago.
North American beavers typically weigh between 35 and 65 pounds. The heaviest recorded beaver weighed 110 pounds, according to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
Beavers are usually non-aggressive towards humans unless provoked, and attacks are often associated with rabies.
In a similar incident, a 73-year-old man in Massachusetts was attacked by a presumed rabid beaver in September 2021. The attack lasted around five minutes, and the man sustained lacerations on his arms and legs, as well as a fractured finger, while attempting to defend himself.
In 2012, a group of boy scouts stoned a rabid beaver to death after it attacked a 51-year-old man swimming in Pennsylvania. The boy scouts helped the man exit the water, at which point the beaver redirected its aggression towards a pool noodle.
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