Raising Bipolar

As I mentioned previously, Rye spent the night out Saturday night. He went to his friend’s house early in the day Saturday and around the early evening he needed us to bring him some money.  They were going to go out to eat for dinner and he wanted to pay for himself.  So, Don and I hopped in the car on our way to go out for the evening and brought him some money.  As we drive up, Rye comes running out to the car looking completely frantic and like he had just seen a ghost.

He runs up to our window completely sweaty, freaked and bug-eyed…

“Mom, dad, you aren’t going to believe what happened!”  huff, huff, huff, deep breath, deep breath …”We were attacked by a really angry beaver!”

Ok, now, let’s pause for a moment.

You have to keep in mind here that we live in the country, kind of, but we don’t necessarily live near any rivers or streams.  Well, maybe a stream or two but certainly not any that would support a large beaver population.  And quite honestly, I have never even heard of one living anywhere around here.  Ever.  So, my first thought is…Oh God, he’s hallucinating.  And he’s paranoid.  He’s seeing angry beavers.  And he’s at a friends house.  Surrounded by other people.  Oh man, this isn’t good.

He goes on with great zeal, panting and sweating.

“We were down by the pond [they have a huge fishing pond] and out of nowhere this giant beaver comes out of the water with these huge two front teeth and these really creepy angry eyes and these huge webbed feet with these giant claws on them and he’s darting at us and hissing and we start freaking out and running and he’s chasing us away from the pond.  It was so scary.  He was huge!!  And he was completely freaking out!!  He wanted to kill us!!”

Now, at this point I’m beginning to wonder. There is an awful lot of detail to this.  And his friend apparently was involved too.  Maybe this wasn’t a hallucination.   But, what the heck?  Never, ever have I heard of a beaver living in this area.

Why does the weird stuff always happen to him?

And he goes on.

“So then we ran up to the house and got the dad and the older brother.  They went down to the pond and the beaver did the same thing to them.  It was so freaky!!  The beaver was crazed!!  The dad and the older brother decided they could not have a dangerous beaver on their property and so close to the house so they went and got a shotgun, came back to the pond and blew the beaver to smithereens.   It was so scary!!  And so gross!!”

Oh my Lord.  Great.  Not only now do we have an angry attack beaver experience to mitigate over the next few days but now we also have images of an exploding angry beaver to work through.  Just what every parent of a bipolar child wants.  Ughh.

Anyway, for the good or the bad,  it turns out the whole story was not a hallucination but was true.  The brother shot the beaver because although they are all great animal lovers, the beaver was acting so crazed that they could not be sure it didn’t have rabies.  And they had to keep everyone safe.  And not using their pond wasn’t an option.

So, now we have tales of intrigue about an attack beaver.  And Rye, of course, is now having nightmares of people and animals chasing him, shootings, etc. etc.  Hopefully this will work it’s way through his system soon.

We can hope, right?

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Here are a couple of other instances of angry beavers attacking.  Who knew?

http://scribalterror.blogs.com/scribal_terror/2007/08/swedish-beavers.html

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/beaver-attack/