A mother kicked, chased and eventually pinned down a rabid fox that bit her 8-year-old daughter while the girl was on a swing set. Pamela Berube, 39, of Hudson, had taken her eldest daughter to a flute lesson at a private home in Londonderry on Thursday.
Her other two children, 8-year-old Deena and 10-year-old Joshua, were playing in the flute teacher's back yard when Berube heard a scream — "and it was not a regular scream," she said.
She ran outside to discover a fox chasing the children around the yard. Deena fell, and her mother kicked the fox away from her.
"Apparently not hard enough, because he kept going after Deena," said the flute instructor, Cindy Winsor, who also ran to help.
Winsor grabbed a plastic baseball bat and hit the fox with it, but the blow didn't stop him. Berube chased the fox until it bit her arm. Then she grabbed it by the neck and pinned it to the ground for 10 minutes, until police arrived and shot it.
Berube needed eight stitches for her arm. Deena, bitten on her foot and hand, did not need stitches.
Rabies tests on the fox at the state Department of Health and Human Services' public health lab came back positive Friday, said spokesman Gregg Moore.
Berube called the incident "terrorizing."
"To see a child chased by a wild animal — I never thought that would happen in my life," she said.
