A 75-year-old Virginia woman strangled a rabid raccoon to death Saturday after it attacked her as she wandered in a Richmond botanical garden.
Cas Overton, from Henrico County, Virginia,
told the Richmond Times-Dispatch the rabid raccoon apparently came out of some bamboo near where she was walking at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens and attacked her leg, biting her.
“I tried to shake it off and realized how violent it was,” Overton told the newspaper. “As I moved backward away from it, I grabbed its neck and I knew that I couldn’t get away from it. If I ran, it would be faster than I would and would just tear me to pieces. So I threw it to the ground and I strangled it — with both hands. I am a terrific animal lover. It’s the last thing in the world I would have ever wanted to do, but you know self-preservation kicks in, and I guess a primitive part of my brain just went into operation and that was it.”
Overton is undergoing a series of rabies shots, and the Times-Dispatch reported that the raccoon was confirmed to have rabies by a state lab.
The botanical garden
posted a warning about the incident on its website: “A rabid raccoon was removed from one of our wooded areas on Saturday, March 7. The animal came into contact with a visitor, was removed and tested positive for rabies. The wooded area where the incident occurred has been closed off for the next few days.”
The online community was shocked at the woman’s ability to deal with the raccoon, and many were unsure they could do the same thing:
“This is the most fearless woman I've heard of. She strangles a rabid raccoon, while maintaining her composure. I want to send her flowers,” one person wrote on the Dispatch story.
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