A man witnessing a rabid bobcat attacking a dog in front of a country club in Arizona decided to take matters into his own hands by fighting the bobcat to save the dog, according to a video of the incident.
Steve Verschoor, a self-professed “animal lover,” made the split-second decision to intervene when he drove past a country club Sunday morning in the town of Anthem.
“Attacking a wild animal with your bare hands probably isn’t a good idea,” Verschoor told KPNX-TV after the attack. “Being an animal lover, I just went into attack mode.”
Jason Garrido, a witness who recorded the video, said Verschoor left his car so quickly that he left it in gear. Garrido added that he stepped in to keep the car from rolling away and began recording the scene soon after.
“Dog got into a fight with a little bobcat,” Garrido said to the camera as the two animals fought it out.
A crowd of several men gathered around the animals as Verschoor got involved.
“Let go!” a man yelled as he tried to pull the dog away from the bobcat. Verschoor tried to hold the wild animal away from the dog, when he suddenly let out a loud scream.
“Somehow in that fracas there, he clung onto my hand,” Verschoor said. “Chomped me pretty good. Good enough to break the thumb.”
“Oh, my God!” Garrido yelled as he filmed the incident.
Verschoor lifted his arms with the bobcat clinging with its jaws to one of his hands, spun around with it in the hopes it would let go, and wrestled it before it finally let him loose.
The bobcat circled the dog and the crowd of men as if it might strike again before it ran off into the country club.
The animal stationed itself by a storm drain where a sheriff’s deputy shot it dead, KNXV reported.
The state’s Wildlife Department ran tests on the dead animal and found that it tested positive for rabies.
Verschoor is waiting to see if he tested positive for rabies. The dog, meanwhile, has been quarantined, but all its shots were up to date, and and it got away with only a scratch.
Bobcats are abundant in Arizona and have the ability to jump up to 12 feet in the air, according to Arizona’s Game and Fish Department.
They are known to go after pets but unless they are rabid, they do not normally attack humans.
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