A girl has survived by a “miracle” after she was attacked by a bear whereas letting her canine outdoors in Pennsylvania.
Sitting in Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, Lee Ann Galante, 55, advised NBC News that throughout the attack, “I just kept thinking: ‘I can’t believe this is happening. This can’t be happening. I’m being attacked by a bear.’”
“I thought, ‘This is it – I’m going to die,” she added.
Ms Galante was at her residence in Butler Township on Tuesday night time, round 8.30pm, when her eight-pound Pomeranian named Smoky began inflicting a commotion. She then noticed the silhouettes of three massive bear cubs in her neighbour’s tree.
All of a sudden, an enormous bear jumped over the fence and charged at Ms Galante, knocking her over face first onto a concrete floor, and was pulling on the again of her head “so hard that I thought she was going to scalp me,” she advised the outlet.
The bear turned its consideration to Smoky, getting close to the canine, earlier than it rushed at Ms Galante, knocking her to the bottom and biting her left arm.
Thankfully, Ms Galante and Smoky managed to get inside, crawling to her cellphone to ring 911.
“I’m screaming, ‘Someone please help me.’ I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. It was terrifying. I really thought that was gonna be it,” Mr Galante advised WXPI.
“She was ready to charge again. Thank God we got in the house. I don’t know how it happened because I really thought – we would both be dead.”
Butler Township police chief John Hays advised the native outlet, The Butler Eagle, that they obtained a name round 8.45pm regarding the bear attack and had been in a position to recover from the residence comparatively rapidly.
Mr Hays added to WTAE that he’s “been here over 40 years, and it’s never happened. We’ve never had anything like this”.
After the horrific attack, Ms Galante sustained many accidents, corresponding to a damaged nostril, cuts inside her mouth, and puncture wounds, and accidents to her scalp, amongst others, NBCreported.
Mr Galante’s trauma surgeon advised WXPIthat she is anticipated to make a full restoration.
The grownup bear was discovered with three cubs in a tree and the mom bear was ultimately euthanised after she “continued with her aggression”, police advised reporters.
Jesse Bish, the northwest area director on the Pennsylvania Game Commission, additionally advised varied shops that it was laborious to inform if one of many cubs was the one which grabbed ahold of the sufferer, “so we may decide to euthanise those three also, just for the safety of the public”.
If the cubs usually are not euthanised, Mr Bish stated they’ll be tagged and transferred to a extra distant location.
As for Smoky, the pooch managed to flee the entire ordeal with only some scratches on his again.