An Arizona mother says she used nothing more than her own flip-flop to drive off a coyote that attacked her 4-year-old daughter during an ordinary afternoon outing in their neighborhood.
Brittany Cardinal and her daughter had gone outside on a windy Sunday to fly a kite when the encounter turned dangerous. “We had gone outside because it was windy. And my daughter’s like, ‘oh, let’s fly a kite,'” Cardinal said, according to AZ Family.
Moments later, the coyote began nipping at the girl. “I picked her up and then I started yelling at it, thinking, of course, it’s going to go away, and then it didn’t,” Cardinal said. “So then I took off my flip-flop, and I was trying to scare it with that by like trying to hit it.”
During the struggle, Cardinal fell, and the coyote bit her on the face. “I always hear people say like, ‘you don’t feel the pain when like trauma like that happens,’ and I mean, I really didn’t feel any pain,” she said. “I just felt like the pressure of it.”
Mother and daughter escaped and made it back home. Cardinal was left with lacerations and puncture wounds on her face from the bite.
Officials Respond
Arizona Game and Fish officials removed several coyotes from the area following the incident and are testing them for rabies. The agency said Cardinal did everything a person is supposed to do when confronted by a coyote.
Alex Flickinger, public affairs community liaison for Arizona Game and Fish, said, “You fight back, you yell at the animal, be loud with it, throw rocks, whatever you have to do to get that animal to just run off.”
The episode is a reminder that even routine moments in one’s own neighborhood can call for quick action to protect a child, and that having the will to fight back can make the difference regardless of what tools happen to be at hand.
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