A Florida woman fought off a possibly rabid otter, saving her dog and her teenage daughter in the process, WIS-TV reports.
Casina Ewert and her family were getting ready for their day last Tuesday morning when the incident occurred. The debacle began when Ewart’s 17-year-old daughter, Gwyn, let their family dog, Scooter, out the back door for his morning adventures. Not long afterwards, both women heard a loud commotion.
“I sprinted to the backdoor, and I was like, ‘Scooter!’ All I saw was like a big, black ball, just all over the place,” Gwyn said.
Gwyn tried to close the door, but unfortunately she was just a hair too late. The otter was chasing the dog inside, and Gwyn not only failed to close the door before he got inside, but she managed to shut the door on him, seemingly enraging the animal.
“The otter got stuck,” Gwyn said.
Once again, the animals were fighting, and so fast and furious were the beasts’ fisticuffs that Casina couldn’t tell who was who, describing the entire situation as “a big, tangled tumbleweed.”
Casina says that she grabbed the otter by the tail, but the beast kept latching onto pieces of furniture
“I snatched it by the tail, and then, I held it up like a prize. The otter’s going crazy,” she said.
Eventually she was able to get a long-enough hold on the animal to throw it into the backyard and close the door.
“My husband’s like, ‘Case, you just alligator-wrangled an otter in the living room,’” she said.
When the dust had settled, both Gwyn and Scooter had received multiple bite marks, according to WGHP-TV .
Gwyn was taken to a hospital to get stitched up and get a series of rabies shots. Scooter, for his part, had just gotten his rabies shot a couple of days earlier, but was still placed under quarantine just as a precautionary measure.
As for the otter, he or she hasn’t been caught, so there’s no knowing for sure if it was rabid. However, Dustin Hooper, an animal trapper and owner of All Creatures Wildlife Control, says that otters normally flee from humans, so this one’s behavior was definitely unusual.
Officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have been setting up traps in order to catch the animal and test it. Meanwhile, the agency is getting reports from other homeowners of a crazed otter attacking their dogs.
