Posted on 07/27/2003 12:06:25 PM PDT by steveo
SHANNONDALE, W.Va. (AP) -- An 8-year-old girl had reconstructive surgery on her hand after being attacked by a rabid beaver in Jefferson County earlier this month.
Robin Hays' said her daughter, Maddison, was playing along the Shenandoah River behind their Shannondale home on July 11 when the attack occurred.
"We were getting ready for a pig roast, and she was down there playing,'' Hays told The Journal in Martinsburg. "Suddenly, I heard a blood-curdling scream.''
Hays saw the beaver clamped onto her daughter's hand, then shook her arm to get it free, grabbed her daughter and ran.
The beaver chased them, she said, and two men attending the pig roast cornered the animal and killed it with a shovel.
Hays' daughter, who suffered bites on her leg and hand, was initially treated at Jefferson Memorial Hospital.
A specialist at Loudoun County Hospital in Virginia provided treatment on her hand that included reconstructive surgery on the tendons, nerves and veins, Hays said. Maddison's hand was in a partial cast, and she could move her fingers but not her thumb, Hays said.
"She's doing very well,'' Hays said.
State Division of Natural Resources officers took the dead animal, Hays said.
The animal's brain was sent to the Jefferson County Health Department, and then to a lab in Charleston where it tested positive for rabies, the newspaper reported.
While rabies is common in that area, beaver attacks are rare, said Lisa Dunn, the health department's sanitarian supervisor.
AP-ES-07-27-03 1206EDT
Oh, well...somebody was going to say it eventually!
now see this is why trapping is important to reduce the risk of attacks by lowering the population there is less rabid animals and they cant attack people then but it still can occur this is a good reason why trapping is important
You reactivated it, congratz!
What word did you search for; “rabid” or “beaver” ?
TIME WARP!!!!!
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