A Massachusetts woman describes a recent coyote attack while she was in her car.
Robin Totman explained that the coyote attacked her as she was backing out of her driveway in her rural Stoughton, Massachusetts neighborhood.
“It was scary. There was definitely something wrong with the animal. I’m not an expert, but you could tell it might be rabid,” Totman told CBS News Boston.
“I had my window down and a coyote ran up to the car and jumped up to the window,” Totman said. Company. “He kept jumping on my car. I rolled up the window and started honking to try and scare him.”
Totman explained that she tried to defuse the situation by scaring the animal away. “I tried to honk to try to, you know, make him go away or whatever, and really, it didn’t go anywhere. It just trapped me,” she said.
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Totman told CBS News Boston that she was trapped in her car for about 15 minutes while the coyote remained nearby. Unsure of what to do next, Totman knew she couldn’t get out of her car safely, especially since the coyote remained close.
“He was just running back and forth,” she said. “He ran to the door; it ran to the car; scratched again.”
While remaining in her car, her wife called to inform him that she was trapped in her car by a wild animal.
Fifteen minutes later, another animal in the nearby woods distracted the coyote from Totman and she was able to run safely into her home.
Totman remains concerned about her 11-year-old son’s frequency in the driveway. “It was scary. I mean, I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “That was the main thing. I’ve never encountered anything like that before.”
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Totman reported the incident to the Stoughton Police Station and shared the story in a neighborhood Facebook group to alert other residents to the coyote’s presence.
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Dave Wattles, a black bear and furrier biologist for the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Wildlife, explained that there has been a “recent increase” in rabid coyote incidents due to “the high density of coyotes throughout [Mass.],” by Company.
Wattles added that he believes the coyote Totman encountered was rabid.
“That kind of real aggression where it’s kind of, going at, you know – whether it’s her, the car, it’s hard to say – but with real fervor and aggression. That’s an indication that it was an angry animal,” he said. told Company.
The Massachusetts Department of Fish and Wildlife notes that residents should remove food sources, protect pets, remove shelters and protect coyotes — which includes waving or clapping at a coyote, making loud noises, spraying a hose or throwing small objects in the coyote’s direction.
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Source: HIS Education