Hero Woman Strangles Rabid Raccoon with Her Bare Hands

Give it up for Cas Overton, a 75-year-old woman from Henrico, VA, who was attacked by a rabid raccoon while walking through her local botanical garden and defended herself by strangling it to death with her bare hands. Grizzly Adams has nothing on Cas.

Overton was walking down one the more remote paths of the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden when the raccoon rushed out of the bamboo and attacked her leg.

“I tried to shake it off and realized how violent it was,” she told the Richmond Times Dispatch. “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?

“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.”

CAS, YOU BADASS MOTHER FUCKER. I saw a rabid badger once and you know what I did? Nothing. I just stood there and hoped for the best. Whether or not I’d act the same way if it had attacked me, I don’t know and I never want to find out. So instead I’ll just request that Overton accompanies me on all walks in the wild from now on.

Since the raccoon strangling, Overton has been treated with preventative rabies shots and is doing well. “I think that the presence of mind and the focusing on the moment was just with me to manage to do this,” she said.