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Rabid beaver bites Boy Scout leader’s butt

Once again, a toothy rodent is putting Columbia County on the national media map. Only this time, it’s a rabid beaver.

Image: National Geographic

Boy Scout Troop 32 out of Elizaville was camping along the Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania when its leader, a Pine Plains resident, was attacked repeatedly by a beaver. The Troop leader “suffered bites [on] his backside, his leg and arm” before his scouts “killed the animal as it clung to its victim even after he reached shore.”

According to The Pike County Courier and dozens of other media outlets around the country, the beaver was tested and found to be rabid. The man is being treated for rabies, and of course is wished a speedy recover.

(Growing up along a small river, in my experience these animals avoid humans whenever possible, and aren’t to be feared—but rabies will turn any critter into a crazed killer.)

Food notes from all over

More culinary reports from around the region, following on the news of the Hudson diner's purchase:

• The Vanderbilt Inn in Philmont reopens tonight, Monday, with a serious chef and a farm-to-table ethos;

• Chopsticks in Catskill, located near the relatively new Beer World, offers Chinese, Japanese, and most of all Thai food — each of them simple but solid. (It remains a mystery why Columbia County has no Thai restaurant, while Greene has two...)

• Wunderbar in Hudson has changed hands, though Imre is still around for a few weeks for the transition;

• Also in Hudson, the former Hudson House gallery building (which briefly housed an outpost of Hammertown Barn) reportedly has been purchased by a Brooklyn bistro owner, but won't open for one or two years by various accounts;

• MOD's new Hudson digs got their beer and wine license.

• The Ramp Festival launches next weekend (April 30th) at the Basilica in Hudson on Saturday;

* Agriturismo in Pine Plains reopens on the 22nd.

New Alliance hires legal eagle

See the full Valley Alliance press release at the Save the South Bay site, which reads in part:

The Alliance announced Monday morning that it has raised the funds necessary to retain the well-respected land use attorney Warren Replansky of Pine Plains to analyze the City's Draft Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, or LWRP. [...] Replansky's extensive track record includes assisting municipalities and citizens throughout the region to properly enact and enforce land use planning laws.

Pine Plains