Coyote Attacks 9-Year-Old North Carolina Girl As She Was Entering Her House


A wild coyote attacked a 9-year-old North Carolina girl earlier this week, and while she was wounded multiple times in the attack, she was able to relate to reporters what happened when, in her words, the coyote “decided it wants to eat [her].”

According to the Winston-Salem Journal, Madilyn Fowler, a third-grader at Shady Grove Elementary in Advance, N.C., was outside her house on Thursday evening, when she saw a coyote approximately the same size as her black Labrador. The wild animal then charged at her, biting at her skirt and chasing her as she tried to run for safety. All in all, the coyote bit the young girl three times and left her with several cuts and wounds on her face and back, with the most severe one being a 10-inch cut on her lower back.

“I tried [to] open the door but it pinned me to the door,” Madilyn said, as quoted by 11 Alive.

“It bit me, it wasn’t scratches. At first, they thought it was scratches, then they said it had to be rabid because [coyotes] don’t come out during the daytime. They’re nocturnal.”

Madilyn Fowler’s mother, April, spotted the coyote and hit it on its snout to drive it away and keep her daughter away from further harm. While Animal Control was notified soon after the incident, at around 6:35 p.m. on Thursday, the coyote has yet to be spotted. 11 Alive also noted that the animal had tried to attack the Fowler family’s dog before it attacked Madilyn.

After the coyote attack, Madilyn received five rabies shots at Brenner Children’s Hospital in Winston-Salem, which she said “hurt less than the coyote bites.” She continues to recover successfully as of this writing, with the cuts on her back and her face now showing as “purple bruises,” as the Winston-Salem Journal described them. The 9-year-old is still due for another three rabies treatments.

Coyotes are larger members of the dog family, measuring about 32 to 37 inches from head to rump and weighing about 20 to 50 pounds, according to Live Science. They are known to be nocturnal creatures who hunt at night, while also standing out for their sharp senses of sight, smell, and hearing, and their “wily” nature. While they can normally be found in forests and mountainous areas, Live Science noted that they have recently become more common in big cities, as they adjust to the increasing presence of humans in their countryside habitats. Earlier this week, the Inquisitr reported on a series of coyote attacks in Westchester County, New York, as authorities recently shot one of the two coyotes responsible for biting multiple people in the area.

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