Pennypack Creek

A rodent biting spree was halted Thursday with the capture and killing of a suspected rabid beaver in Northeast Philadelphia, officials said. Wildlife agents were searching the Pennypack Creek area between Bustleton Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard for any more menacing beavers. In the meantime, the public should stay clear of the area, officials said. The dead beaver was being tested for rabies at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Chester County, said Jerry Czech, a wildlife conservation officer with the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Bryn Athyn's wayward alligator already has a new home: Norristown's Elmwood Park Zoo. Yesterday afternoon, the gator's leisurely sunbathing was rudely interrupted by animal control officers. Overnight, its quarters were a bit more cramped: the bathtub of the Warminster public works director, Buddy Mullen. This morning, it just lay there in shallow water, unsedated, behind the blue-green Little Mermaid shower curtains. "He's pretty friendly," said Mullen. "If you rub him underneath his neck a little bit, he likes that.

It was the catch of the day for Pennypack Creek in Northeast Philadelphia as Matt Brown, 19, tossed in a bucket of trout yesterday. The state Fish and Boat Commission released more than 10,000 fish into waterways in preparation for trout season, which opens Saturday.

Would-be trout fishermen (above) watch as a Pennsylvania Fish Commission worker readies to release some 10,000 of the colorful creatures into the Pennypack Creek. Today, fish dumped yesterday (right) will be plucked back out, as Andys and Opeys throughout the Delaware Valley celebrate the opening of trout season and deposit catches into buckets en route to the frying pan.

A beaver suspected of biting three people around Pennypack Creek has been positively tested for rabies, state officials said Friday. The attacks occurred between Bustleton Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia and the public is urged to avoid the area while authorities search for any other infected beavers, officials said. A beaver was captured and killed Thursday near where a child was bitten. The carcass was tested at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Chester County and the animal tested positive for the rabies virus, officials said.

BOYERTOWN, Pa. - Authorities have captured the second alligator in two weeks in a Douglass Township creek. "I have no idea where they are coming from," Harry D. Brown III, executive director of the Animal Rescue League of Berks County, said Tuesday. A woman jogging Tuesday afternoon spotted the three-foot alligator on a rock in Ironstone Creek, near where one was captured July 17, and called police. "I poked him a few times to get him to lift his head, and then I used a catch pole to put a line around his neck so he wouldn't get away," Brown said.

As a sportsman living in Philadelphia, where Pennypack Creek gives me frequent respite from city life, I've come to view our nation's vast tracts of open country as a real treasure. They are places where hunting and fishing reign supreme, and where a man can lose himself just for a bit while chasing fish or game. For the last few years, I and a number of fishing pals from the Philadelphia area have made an annual fly-fishing trip to southwestern Wyoming. Fishing for gorgeous strains of wild cutthroat trout there, we marveled at the Western mountains that made the Poconos look like the distant cousins they are. We were amazed to see herds of trophy deer and elk roaming through the Wyoming Range - a place that has been seared in my memory forever.

They came, young and old, from surrounding neighborhoods, wearing camouflage clothes and toting fishing gear. They came, big and small, with hip-high rubber waders and ready nets, eager and hopeful. Seniors and juniors, amateurs and veterans, they came to Pennypack Creek by the thousands, with their corn and worm bait, to join in the fishing Saturday, the opening day of the trout season. They carried the most varied of fishing equipment, from the high-tech super-deluxe graphite poles and multitiered tackle boxes sported by a father and son - who appeared to have just stepped from the cover of Field and Stream magazine - to the reel-less tree branch used by the Kuliczkowski family.

It's shaping up as a battle of the ghost shiner against the coal miner, the gravel chub against the gravel dredger, and the Iowa darter against the Pennsylvania lawmaker. So far, the fish and the people are at an impasse. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission has delayed for a fourth time its plan to protect those and other fish species because of opposition from miners, dredgers, and their legislative allies who fear the plan would increase mining costs. The commission wants to increase the number of fish species listed as endangered or threatened in Pennsylvania from 20 to 45, including such rare species as the bigmouth buffalo, longear sunfish and threespine stickleback, which lives in the lower reaches of Pennypack Creek in Philadelphia.

A woman was killed and a passenger in the car she was driving was in extremely critical condition Monday afternoon after the car crashed through a guardrail and plunged 75 feet into the Pennypack Creek in Northeast Philadelphia, police said. About 1:30 p.m., the 2006 Lincoln Town Car was traveling south in the 8500 block of Krewstown Road when it failed to navigate a turn, crossed the northbound lane, and plowed into the guardrail, said Chief Inspector Scott Small. The car landed upside down in about three feet of water, Small said.

A beaver suspected of biting three people around Pennypack Creek has been positively tested for rabies, state officials said Friday. The attacks occurred between Bustleton Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia and the public is urged to avoid the area while authorities search for any other infected beavers, officials said. A beaver was captured and killed Thursday near where a child was bitten. The carcass was tested at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Chester County and the animal tested positive for the rabies virus, officials said.

A rodent biting spree was halted Thursday with the capture and killing of a suspected rabid beaver in Northeast Philadelphia, officials said. Wildlife agents were searching the Pennypack Creek area between Bustleton Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard for any more menacing beavers. In the meantime, the public should stay clear of the area, officials said. The dead beaver was being tested for rabies at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Chester County, said Jerry Czech, a wildlife conservation officer with the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Ashley Adams said she was shocked to hear that her friend Saulius Kvaraciejus disappeared Tuesday evening, after he and friends decided to go rafting in the Pennypack Creek. "I just wish someone was there to tell him how stupid that idea was," she said. Kvaraciejus, 20, of Holmesburg, and two other men decided to ride blow-up pool floats down a raging, rain-swollen Pennypack Creek. But after they went down a man-made waterfall near Winchester Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard, Kvaraciejus and at least one other man fell into the water at around 6:50 p.m., police said.

Two incidents in the rain-swollen Pennypack Creek in Northeast Philadelphia yesterday had drastically different outcomes. In the morning, fire officials rescued a man stuck next to the pillar of a rail bridge near the intersection of Ashburner Street and Frankford Avenue; hours later, rescuers were unable to find a man who vanished in the water a few miles away. In that second incident, two men fell into the water after their raft overturned near Winchester Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard about 6:50 p.m., police said, but only one man got out safely.

As a sportsman living in Philadelphia, where Pennypack Creek gives me frequent respite from city life, I've come to view our nation's vast tracts of open country as a real treasure. They are places where hunting and fishing reign supreme, and where a man can lose himself just for a bit while chasing fish or game. For the last few years, I and a number of fishing pals from the Philadelphia area have made an annual fly-fishing trip to southwestern Wyoming. Fishing for gorgeous strains of wild cutthroat trout there, we marveled at the Western mountains that made the Poconos look like the distant cousins they are. We were amazed to see herds of trophy deer and elk roaming through the Wyoming Range - a place that has been seared in my memory forever.

BOYERTOWN, Pa. - Authorities have captured the second alligator in two weeks in a Douglass Township creek. "I have no idea where they are coming from," Harry D. Brown III, executive director of the Animal Rescue League of Berks County, said Tuesday. A woman jogging Tuesday afternoon spotted the three-foot alligator on a rock in Ironstone Creek, near where one was captured July 17, and called police. "I poked him a few times to get him to lift his head, and then I used a catch pole to put a line around his neck so he wouldn't get away," Brown said.