A Maine woman learned the hard way that raccoons are not the adorable creatures she always believed them to be.
In a scene she likened to something out of a Stephen King novel, Rachel Borch was out for a run on a wooded trail near her home when she was attacked by a rabid raccoon. Faced with having no other choice, she fought it off, killing it with her bare hands by holding it in a puddle of water as it gripped onto her hand with its teeth and clawed and scratched at her. Borch, who lives in Hope, Maine, told the Bangor Daily News that her run was lovely, ordinary and peaceful … until it wasn’t.
“Imagine the Tasmanian devil,” the 21-year-old said. “It was terrifying.”
At that point on a path too narrow path for both of them, the raccoon lunged at her. She knew instantly that she was going to be bitten and its behavior as it moved around her feet indicated that the animal was probably rabid. It latched onto her thumb with its teeth and refused to get go, its paws scratching her arms and legs and she screamed. Borch had no idea what to do until she noticed that she had dropped her phone into a puddle. At that point, Borch, a vegetarian, had to do what she had to do.
“I didn’t think I could strangle [the raccoon] with my bare hands,” she said, so, “with my thumb in its mouth, I just pushed its head down into the muck.”
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
