Two stories about rabid animals attacking humans made headlines this week.
Until now, squirrels were the only rodents to appear in the "Predator Watch" series. I wrote about an aggressive squirrel that sent two people from a San Francisco Bay Area city to the ER in 2025. The animal most likely displayed predatory behavior because humans had fed it in the past.
This week saw another rodent attack, when a beaver bit an 8-year-old boy who was fishing in a New Jersey lake. As in the squirrel story, there wasn’t only one victim, as the same beaver attacked other visitors to Lake Henry in the Continental Soldiers Park complex in Mahwah that same day. Health department officials confirmed that the animal tested positive for rabies and urged people who came in contact with it to get tested.
Video of the incident feels almost surreal, and while the man who filmed the encounter is laughing, he sounds shocked that a beaver is "attacking people."
Fortunately, a relative was able to throw the beaver back into the lake after the boy fell down on the bank while trying to get away and was bitten on the thigh. The boy is doing well after receiving treatment at Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern, N.Y., but a beaver bite can be deadly, as this story from 2013 illustrates:
A beaver has attacked a 60-year-old fisherman in Belarus, slicing an artery and causing him to bleed to death.
It was the latest in a series of beaver attacks on humans in the country, as the rodents, who have razor-sharp teeth, have turned increasingly aggressive after wandering near homes, shops and schools.
"The character of the wound was totally shocking," said the village doctor Leonty Sulim. "We had never run into anything like this before.
You’ll notice in the New Jersey lake video that a small dog tries to drive off the beaver, which leads into our next story, also involving an animal — a bobcat — that wouldn’t typically come to mind when thinking about wild animal attacks on humans. I’ve seen several bobcats in the Los Angeles area, including one on my front lawn early in the morning. As with my neighborhood encounters with coyotes, these wild cats seem more wary of people than threatening. Indeed, the Institute for Environmental Research and Education says "there are no reliably documented cases of a healthy wild bobcat killing a human in North America.”
Related: Predator Watch: The Coyotes Living Among Us
You don't want to come face-to-face with an unhealthy one, however, like one woman did this week. While she was on a walk in her Prescott, Ariz., neighborhood, Moses, her 6-year-old German Shepherd, saved her from a rabid bobcat attack. Her harrowing description of what transpired resembles the unprovoked, relentless beaver attack in New Jersey:
"This cat came at me and jumped me, and I thought it was a coyote because we don’t have bobcats around here. And so, I pushed it away, and it came right back,” she said.
The bobcat scratched her arm before going after Moses.
“I was afraid. I kept saying, ‘Go, go, go, go,’ to Moses. I was wanting him to get away, but when I got back, he had killed a bobcat,” she said.
She said Moses broke the bobcat’s neck, killing it right in her driveway.
“He did what dogs, German Shepherds do,” she said.
The sheriff's office said there were three other reported bobcat attacks within 48 hours and warned residents that other wildlife could be infected with rabies. Fortunately, Moses was up to date on his rabies vaccination, and his owner has been treated and is expected to be OK. She called Moses "the hero of the day."
Of course, there's no shortage of stories of man's best friend saving human lives. The Guardian lists some examples of "hero dogs who save lives," including one dog that jumped onto a black bear attacking its owner.
Has your dog ever come to your rescue? Share in the comments. I'll leave you with a video of a man saving his wife from a rabid bobcat attack in front of their North Carolina home in 2021.
