August 8, 2026
Dam it, not again
Maryland Closes More of Cunningham Falls State Park After Second Beaver Attack
Park visitors are stunned as ‘beaver attack’ turns from weird joke to real rabies scare
TLDR: Maryland closed more of Cunningham Falls after a second beaver attack, and the animal later tested positive for rabies. Online, people bounced from joking about the unbelievable headline to realizing this is a real safety scare after two infected beavers in less than two weeks.
What started as a headline people could barely believe quickly turned into a full-on "wait, this is serious?" moment online. Maryland officials shut down more of Cunningham Falls State Park after a 19-year-old fisherman was bitten on the ankle near Hunting Creek Lake. He got treatment for rabies exposure and a tetanus shot, and later the state confirmed the second beaver involved in these recent attacks tested positive for rabies. That made this much bigger than a strange wildlife story: it became a genuine public health scare, with swimming, fishing, boating, and water access now blocked in the affected area while officials search for more infected animals.
But the internet, being the internet, immediately latched onto the sheer absurdity of the phrase "beaver attack." One commenter joked it wasn’t on their "headline bingo card," perfectly capturing the shared disbelief. Another zeroed in on the article’s calm line that such attacks are rare and "primarily involve rabid animals"—which, after the update, stopped sounding like a quirky disclaimer and started sounding ominous. The darkest laugh came from a commenter comparing rabies-driven biting to the origin story of the zombie meme, then adding that it also describes a lot of social media. That joke hit because it mixed horror, science, and internet self-own in one shot.
There wasn’t much argument in the thread, but there was a sharp emotional swing: from mocking the bizarre headline to realizing this is the park’s second rabid beaver attack in under two weeks. In other words, the comments went from meme mode to "okay, maybe don’t go near that lake."
Key Points
- •Maryland closed additional sections of Cunningham Falls State Park after a 19-year-old fisherman was bitten by a beaver on August 5 near Hunting Creek Lake.
- •The injured fisherman treated himself to Meritus Medical Center, where he received rabies exposure treatment and a tetanus shot.
- •The beaver involved in the second attack was captured, euthanized, and later confirmed positive for rabies by the Maryland Department of Health.
- •This was the second rabid-beaver attack at the park within two weeks, following a July 26 attack on a 13-year-old swimmer.
- •Officials prohibited swimming, fishing, boating, and all water access in affected areas while investigating a possible rabies outbreak in the local beaver population and expanding surveillance.