A woman from a village in Southern Russia fought off and killed a wolf with an axe.
Fifty-six-year-old Aishat Maksudova, from the village of Novo Biryuzyak in the Dagestan region, was herding sheep and cows with a group of villagers.
Maksudova heard the sound of a calf being attacked and ran to scare the wolf away. When she did, the wolf turned on her and began to attack. She didn’t back down.
“I was not even frightened,” she said. “I stood like this, holding an axe like this. And the wolf, with an open mouth suddenly jumped on me. Jumped like that. The wolf clawed at my leg and I wanted to hit him with the axe.”
As Maksudova went to hit the wolf, it grabbed hold of her.
“When I raised my arm up like this, the wolf was just holding my hand. Trying to claw my hand. I wanted to open his mouth and put my fist all the way there, all the way to his throat. But I could not open him,” she said.
“So I just left my hand, and the wolf was just clawing into it, pulling on it, pulling away like this. And then I took the axe and hit him on his head,” Maksudova said.
Maksudova hit the wolf several times before it died, and has become a hero in her province in the North Caucasus Mountains. She was still being treated for her wounds Tuesday at a local hospital, but doctors said she is recuperating well.
