A North Carolina woman is grateful for her husband's quick thinking after being attacked by a rabid bobcat in the driveway of their home in a wild scene caught on video.
Kristi Wade's husband, Happy Wade, pulled an attacking bobcat off her back on April 9, threw it to the ground, and then chased it down and shot it dead. Tests later confirmed that the bobcat had rabies.
"He saved my life," Kristi Wade told NBC affiliate WECT. "I don't know where I'd be or what sort of shape I'd be in right now had he not been there."
The couple suffered bites and scratches and had to get multiple shots following the attack.
The ordeal, which was captured on the home security camera at their home in Pender County, showed a quiet weekday morning turn into a harrowing encounter as the couple prepared to take their cat to the veterinarian.
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As Kristi Wade goes to get into their SUV, a bobcat lunged at her and latches to her back.
"I knew it was a cat because I know what a cat sounds like, but it sounded like a very angry cat," she said.
Hearing his wife shrieking, Happy Wade ran around to the other side of his parked SUV and ripped the animal off his wife's back.
"I just remember seeing this face and it was trying to bite her right there in the side of the neck. And so I shoved my arm in and that's how I ended up with it like this (above his head)," he told WECT.
He carried the bobcat above his head into the front yard as it attacked him and then hurled it to the ground.
"I could literally feel the tooth on my knuckle," he said.
The bobcat is then seen on the video running back toward the front of the car. Wade, who has a concealed carry permit, pulls out a handgun and starts chasing it. He tracked the animal down and killed it.
The Pender County Sheriff's Office released a statement on Facebook on April 12 saying the bobcat was submitted for testing at the North Carolina state laboratory, which informed the police department that it tested positive for rabies.
The department then reminded people that it's a state law to keep their pets vaccinated against rabies.
"I knew that it had to have something, and so I figured it was rabies," Happy Wade said. "I knew it had already attacked two people — if it attacked someone else and I didn't do something, morally it would've bothered me for a long time."