Three beaver attacks in three weeks. Two confirmed rabid. That’s the run Maryland’s state parks have had since late July, and it’s forced the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to close swimming, fishing, and boating at two popular parks — Cunningham Falls in Frederick County and Seneca Creek in Montgomery County. Nobody covers beavers as a rabies vector, because normally they aren’t one. This month they are, and if your dog swims, drinks from, or noses around creeks and lakes anywhere — not just in Maryland — it’s worth understanding why.

We’ve written about wildlife encounters on trail and about the bear-conflict data that says dogs raise your risk more than people assume. This is a different animal, literally and in terms of the mechanism. Bears you can see coming. A rabid beaver in a creek is invisible until it isn’t.

Quick Verdict: What’s Happening and What to Do

Detail	What You Need to Know
Attack #1	July 26, Cunningham Falls — 13-year-old swimmer bitten, airlifted to Johns Hopkins; beaver captured, euthanized, confirmed rabid July 27
Attack #2	Aug. 5, Cunningham Falls — 19-year-old angler bitten on the ankle at South Beach Day Use Area; beaver confirmed rabid Aug. 6
Attack #3	Aug. 14, Seneca Creek State Park — 10-year-old girl bitten while swimming with a camp group; beaver escaped uncaptured, presumed rabid but untested
Cunningham Falls closures	Hunting Creek Lake, Big Hunting Creek, Houck Day Use Area, and the boat ramp — swimming, fishing, boating, and all water access prohibited
Seneca Creek closures	The incident area and roughly a mile of trail near Berryville Road, plus the adjacent parking lot; the separate Lake Area off Clopper Road stays open
Rabies in dogs	Nearly always fatal once symptoms appear in an unvaccinated animal — exposure can happen from a bite or from mouthing a sick or dead beaver on the shoreline
Your dog, today	Skip off-leash water access at both parks until DNR lifts the closures, and keep dogs away from any beaver, dead or alive, anywhere else you hike

The Timeline, in Order

Beaver attacks on people are rare enough that wildlife officials treat one as a fluke. Three in three weeks is not a fluke — it’s a pattern DNR is actively trying to run down.

It started July 26 at Cunningham Falls, when a beaver bit a 13-year-old swimmer hard enough to injure his hands and chest. He was airlifted to Johns Hopkins. The beaver was caught the next day and tested positive for rabies. DNR closed swimming access to Hunting Creek Lake and started daily surveillance, figuring — reasonably — that a single infected animal was the whole story.

It wasn’t. On Aug. 5, a 19-year-old fisherman was bitten on the ankle at the park’s South Beach Day Use Area around 9:30 a.m. That beaver tested positive too, confirmed Aug. 6. DNR responded by closing the Houck Day Use Area, the adjacent boat ramp, and Big Hunting Creek above the lake while wildlife staff investigate what they’re now calling a possible rabies outbreak in the local beaver population.

Then, Aug. 14, a third attack — this one 36 miles away at Seneca Creek State Park, where a 10-year-old girl swimming with a summer camp group was bitten three times on the upper leg near a bend in the creek close to the Potomac. Camp counselors drove the animal off before it could be caught, so it was never tested. DNR closed the incident stretch of creek and about a mile of trail. County health officials say there’s no confirmed rabies outbreak linking the two parks — they’re too far apart, and different counties — but “no confirmed link” and “safe to assume it’s unrelated” aren’t the same claim when a family is standing at a trailhead deciding whether to let the dog off leash.

Why Beavers Attacking People Is the Real Story Here

Beavers are not aggressive animals under normal circumstances. They’re shy, mostly nocturnal, and their entire strategy around a threat is to slap the water with their tail and disappear. A healthy beaver does not chase down a swimmer or a kid in a canoe. When one does, rabies is close to the only explanation wildlife biologists reach for — and Maryland’s own history backs that up. Confirmed rabid-beaver bites in the state before this month happened in 2021 and 2015. One every several years, not three in a month.

That’s the part that makes this worth a post: it’s not that beavers are suddenly dangerous. It’s that an animal species nobody thinks to be wary of near water has become, for the moment, a genuine bite risk at two specific Maryland parks — and rabies doesn’t respect the line between “attacked a person” and “got into it with an off-leash dog that went to investigate a strange, sluggish beaver on the bank.”

What’s the Rabies Risk for a Dog Swimming Near These Beavers?

Rabies spreads through saliva, almost always from a bite, and it’s nearly always fatal once an unvaccinated animal shows symptoms. For a dog, exposure doesn’t require a fight — mouthing, licking, or closely investigating a sick or dead beaver along the shoreline can be enough, since a rabid animal’s saliva carries the virus well before it looks obviously ill. A dog off-leash at a water-access trailhead is at exactly the kind of casual, curious contact that creates risk.

That’s a real difference from most trail hazards we cover. A dog doesn’t need to lose a fight with a rabid animal to be exposed. It just needs to get close enough to sniff, lick, or grab.

What Should You Do If Your Dog Is Exposed to a Rabid or Suspect-Rabid Animal?

1. Wear gloves before you touch your dog or its wounds, and get to a veterinarian the same day — even for what looks like a minor scrape, per CDC rabies exposure guidance.
2. If your dog is currently vaccinated, it typically needs a booster within 96 hours, along with a 45-day observation period at home.
3. If your dog is unvaccinated or overdue, the standard protocol is far harsher: euthanasia or a strict six-month quarantine, depending on state and local rules — which is the single best argument for keeping rabies vaccination current even for a dog that “never leaves the yard except for hikes.”
4. Report the encounter to local animal control or the county health department, so they can try to locate and test the animal. A confirmed-negative result changes everything about what happens next.
5. Don’t let your dog approach a sick, sluggish, or dead beaver — or any wildlife acting strangely — to sniff it out on your behalf. That instinct to investigate is exactly the exposure pathway.

This Isn’t Only a Maryland Problem

Skip the two closed parks and you’ve dodged this specific outbreak. You haven’t dodged the underlying risk, which exists anywhere a dog has casual off-leash access to a creek, pond, or lake shoreline with wildlife nearby. Raccoons, foxes, skunks, and bats are the more familiar rabies vectors nationally — beavers are the outlier here, not the rule — but the exposure pathway for a dog is identical no matter which species is carrying it: a bite, or contact with saliva from investigating a sick or dead animal too closely.

Water access trails carry their own separate hazards on top of that. We’ve covered giardia risk from creek water and leptospirosis exposure from standing water — neither has anything to do with rabies, but they’re the same general lesson: water that looks clean and a shoreline that looks empty aren’t guarantees of either. Our general swimming safety guide covers the rest of what to check before you let a dog into unfamiliar water.

What to Actually Do If You Have a Maryland Trip Planned

• Skip water access at Cunningham Falls entirely for now. The lake, Big Hunting Creek, Houck Day Use Area, and the boat ramp are closed to swimming, fishing, and boating — not just discouraged. The campground and other park facilities remain open, so the trip itself isn’t necessarily off, just the water.
• Avoid the closed stretch of Seneca Creek near Berryville Road. The Lake Area off Clopper Road, on the other side of the park, is still open — but confirm current status before you go, since this closure is newer and less settled than Cunningham Falls’.
• Keep dogs leashed near any creek or shoreline at either park, closed section or not, until DNR confirms the outbreak is contained. A leash is the difference between your dog walking past a sick animal and your dog deciding to introduce itself.
• If your dog does swim or wade anywhere nearby, check it over afterward for bite marks, scratches, or anything that looks like a fresh wound you can’t explain — dogs sometimes come out of water encounters with injuries their owners didn’t see happen.
• Call the park before you drive out. DNR’s public information line can confirm which sections are currently closed; conditions have changed twice already this month and could again.

The Bottom Line

Two confirmed-rabid beavers and a third attack that officials strongly suspect was the same thing have shut down swimming, fishing, and boating at Cunningham Falls and closed a stretch of Seneca Creek — two parks, three weeks, and a species that almost never behaves this way. If a Maryland trip is on the calendar, the water access at both parks is the part to skip, not the whole trip.

The bigger takeaway travels past state lines. Rabies exposure for a dog doesn’t require a fight — a curious nose near a sick or dead animal on a shoreline is enough — and that risk exists at water-access trailheads everywhere, most of them without a beaver behind it. Keep vaccinations current, keep the leash on near water where wildlife has been active, and don’t let your dog decide on its own whether an animal that isn’t moving right is worth investigating.

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Attack timeline and rabies confirmation dates from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and its Seneca Creek closure announcement. July 26 airlift detail from Fox News. Additional reporting from The Washington Post, Maryland Matters, WTOP, and Bethesda Magazine. Rabies exposure and pet quarantine guidance from the CDC. Closures are active and evolving — confirm current status with Maryland DNR before any trip to either park.