A New York man was simply looking for a quiet kayak paddle when he was attacked by an angry beaver, of all things.
“It was like watching a horror film,” Nate Reynolds, a kayak instructor at the BayCreek Paddling Center, told WHAM-TV in Rochester, N.Y. “I heard my name called out from the shop and I ran out the door to see a guy getting pulled into the water.”
The critter was still latched onto kayaker Michael Cavanaugh’s arm when Reynolds reached the dock and whacked the beaver with a paddle. The force of the blow broke the head off the paddle.
Cavanaugh was treated for bite wounds to his arm and back and for rabies, as a precaution.
The beaver disappeared, but its body was found a day later and was being tested for rabies.
Beaver attacks on humans are rare, experts say, but a man was reportedly killed by a beaver last year in the eastern European country of Belarus.
