I am eagerly awaiting what I know to be my destiny: the opportunity to strangle a rabid animal to death with my bare hands in order to save my family.
I have to assume that most other people would succumb to the bobcat’s forceful ministrations, content to die at the paws’n’claws of a beast, but Hart wasn’t trying to go out like that. “I thought, ‘Not today.’ There was no way I was going to die,” she told the Athens Banner-Herald. And you know what, my friends? She didn’t!!
From People:
She knew the large feline would go for her upper body, so she protected herself by squeezing on its throat. After a frightening battle that resulted in a broken finger, many bites and claw wounds to her face, hands, arms, chest and legs, Phillips finally managed to strangle the cat. She didn’t call for help because her 5-year-old granddaughter was in the house [and she didn’t want her to come outside].
Eventually, Phillips’s daughter-in-law called 911 and her son also showed up to stab the cat “multiple times before his mother would release the animal’s lifeless body.”
This is the kind of shit I want to think about doing instead of being frightened or nervous around big animals like horses (the teeth!) and small animals like mice (too skittery). What animal will I strangle with my bare hands in order to protect my kin? Will I be ready when a rabid capybara ambles out of the brush with its red eyes narrowed on my children? I must start my training now. I will gather my weapons from the soft carpet of the forest floor. I will lie in wait. I will be ready.