Rabid Fox Strangled by Woman's Bare Hands After It Bites into Her Leg
A woman trying to fend off a rabid fox that was biting her in the leg in her own backyard had to take drastic measures in order to save her own life.
“I couldn’t do anything else to get it away from me,” Tammy DuBois, 52, of Pittsgrove, told NJ.com. “I don’t like to kill anything.”
The attack occurred on July 18 shortly after she heard rustling in some bushes while she was walking out to her backyard garden.
DuBois says the fox ran out and bit her leg multiple times, puncturing her skin.
The fox reportedly made barking-like sounds and circled her before it bit down on her leg.
She tried to escape into her house but couldn’t while the animal gnawed on her leg, DuBois said.
DuBois also looked for a garden tool or item on the porch to try and free herself from the animal, but there was nothing close by.
“It was biting at my leg, I had to do something,” DuBois said.
She grabbed the animal’s snout with one hand and the fox’s neck with her other hand, she said. The fox struggled to get free but soon went limp from being choked.
She cleaned and bandaged her badly bleeding leg and called her husband, who took her to a hospital, where she began a two-week series of rabies treatment.
Animal control officers retrieved the dead fox and sent it to the state for tests, confirming Monday it had rabies.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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