Woman Grateful to Be Alive After Battle With Wild Animal, Thought She Was Close to ‘Getting Killed’

Dog lover Brandy Willard went outside to check on her pooches and found herself in a life-and-death struggle with a ferocious beast she believes was a hunger-driven wild coyote, KOLD News 13 reported.

The Claysville, Pa., gal feels lucky to be alive having suffered only scratches and bruises on her face, arms and legs from the vicious creature that can be more than 4 feet long and weigh nearly 60 pounds.

The battle for life began the evening of Nov. 28 when Brandy went outside to check on her dogs and found them cowering under her truck — refusing to come out when she called.

Walking around the vehicle, she came face to face with the wild coyote, which leaped on her and forced her back against the truck.

Brandy’s first thoughts were: “I’m not going to let you eat my dog. It just was not going to happen. I was going to get eaten first.”

And then she found herself fighting for her life.

“I had my hands like a pretzel trying to get it off of me,” she recalls. “ ‘OK, I’m getting killed,’ is what I was thinking.”

Brandy believes the fact that she remained pinned upright against the truck — and not taken to the ground — saved her from the monster, which ran off.

Still, she was badly scratched and “on fire. It burned, my whole body just burned.”

Pennsylvania Game Commission officials confirmed that coyotes are native to the state and say, “they primarily are nocturnal, but often hunt during daylight hours, especially in the morning.”

However, since attacks on humans by the dog-like creatures are “rare,” they wonder if Brandy had confronted some other wild or diseased creature.

But she is certain, saying: “I know what it was. I know what I saw. I know what kind of noise it made. You can’t get that out of your head.”

Now, she’s forced to undergo another painful ordeal — a long series of rabies shots.

“They have to take this really thick needle and stick it inside your wound twice, one in your arm,” she says. “I got to go back in four more days, then seven days, then in 10 days and 14 days.”