ActiveRecord:: DangerousAttributeError only in console

Good afternoon,

I am currently migrating an app from rails 2.1 to rails 3 and found a problem that I realized was due to the fact that the BD columns had reserved rails names. I only have read access to BD, so I can't change the name of columns. The column in question is called "reference" and I'm having a very strange behavior during implementation:

1) initializing / creating the object (which maps to the table) on the console I get the message "ActiveRecord:: DangerousAttributeError: reference? is defined by ActiveRecord ". I've tried a few approaches (default_scope, override the instance_method_already_implemented?) But all without success

2) running the code through the browser, i don't get this error, I can persist the object on the database. When i try and fetch it afterwards, i get an error when accessing "self.reference". The strange thing is that if i put a log entry before that access (with an object inspect) i don't get that error anymore...

Thank you so much guys.

Bruno Coelho