She took out the trash-panda.
A courageous Connecticut woman is being hailed as “mom of the year” online after heroically rescuing her daughter from a vicious raccoon that latched onto her leg. A video of her deed has amassed 16.6 million views on Twitter as users laud her bravery in the face of a ferocious beast.
“I heard her screaming and ran to see what was going on. I thought maybe she slammed her hand in the door, I was not expecting to see a raccoon attacking her,” Logan Kelsey MacNamara told Storyful while recounting the “unprovoked” attack, which occurred last week in the family’s hometown of Ashford. “If I didn’t have the video I wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly what happened, it all happened so fast.”
She posted the video to Facebook per her daughter’s request.
The nail-biting clip, captured via surveillance camera, starts off with MacNamara’s 5-year-old daughter Rylee standing on her front porch as she prepares to walk to the school bus. All of a sudden, a huge raccoon comes out of nowhere and starts attacking one of her legs, causing her to scream in terror.
“I was going out to get on the bus and a raccoon was there and tried to attack me,” said little Rylee recalling the frightening scene to local outlet WFSB. “It didn’t want to go off of my leg.”
In the clip, the shrieking girl tries to kick the vicious varmint away to no avail as it clings doggedly to her pants.
Upon her daughter’s cries, MacNamara rushes out of the house and rips the beserk trash panda off her child’s leg.
“Go inside, get in the house,” the mom urges while holding her daughter in one hand and Ranger Rick with the other, dangling it by the scruff of its neck.
Rylee heeds her mom’s command, whereupon the snarling animal whips around and starts mauling MacNamara’s arm.
At that point, the courageous gal warns onlookers to stay away because she believes that the raccoon is “rabid.”
After a short scuffle, the impromptu raccoon wrestler manages to hurl Rocky into her backyard like a furry discus, whereupon the dazed critter flees the scene.
MacNamara said that Rylee sustained a few puncture wounds and, while both have scratches, they are overall faring OK following the attack. She attributes the lack of injuries to the fact that her daughter wore jeans and not leggings like she usually does, Storyful reported.
Meanwhile, animal control services combed the woods Friday in search of the culprit, but it was nowhere to be found.
As such, it’s yet unclear if the raccoon suffered from hydrophobia, however, the pair went to the hospital and received several rabies shots as a precaution. They will need to return every couple of days for the next two weeks for follow-up jabs.
Needless to say, social media admirers were quick to praise MacNamara for her courageous act with one Twitter viewer dubbing her the “mom of the year.”
“That mom is amazing,” fawned one admirer, while another wrote, “That protective mother strength ain’t no joke.”
One fan posted a close-up of MacNamara clutching the raccoon by the scruff of its neck with the caption, “The look on the racoon’s face when it realized it was about to find out.”
Even wildlife experts commended MacNamara’s actions. Geoff Krukar, a wildlife biologist for the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, told FOX 61 that the raccoon definitely appeared to be sick and the mother did the right thing to protect her family.
“The mother behaved in a way that was very heroic,” he said. “I think she and she did everything, everything correctly. By avoiding getting bit, warning the neighbor to stay back and getting the child to safety.”
Despite the tidal wave of praise, MacNamara claimed that she was “more scared than anything.” In the future, she says she won’t let her kids outside without an adult present.
This isn’t the first time a woman has saved the day from a rampaging varmint. In June, a steel-nerved Alaskan woman came to the rescue of New York revelers after heroically “bouncing” an interloping opossum from a Brooklyn bar.