You think you're tough? Sure, but tougher than a 75-year-old woman who strangled to death a rabid badger with her bare hands?

That's what happened in Henrico County, Virginia, where Cas Overton was attacked while working as a volunteer at a Botanical Garden. She told the Washington Post she noticed what appeared to be rabid raccoon, which then lunged at the inside of her left leg, puncturing her skin and latching onto her pants.

What to do? Overton thought about throwing off the raccoon and running away, but feared the animal would catch her and do further damage. So she pinned the raccoon to the ground and killed it with her bard hands. She literally strangled it to death. The story says it took five minutes until the raccoon stopped moving, which seems like a long time based on all the movies I've seen where bad guys are killed by strangulation in about 4.7 seconds.

Anyway, the worst part about the whole ordeal for Overton wasn't the raccoon bite:

She didn’t suffer serious injuries — her knee was scraped and her wrist hurt for a few days from pinning the raccoon — and she has since returned to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, although she says she won’t go back to the area of the attack.  For her, the most painful aspect of it all is knowing that she killed the raccoon.

“I knew I was killing an animal, and I am an animal lover,” she said. “I am basically very Buddhist and Taoist in my approach to living, and you don’t kill. It was horrible, but it had to be done.”

I gotta tell you -- I love animals, but if I am forced to kill a rabid raccoon that's biting me and threatening my life...well, I'm not going to worry too much about it. Might even feel a bit of pride.

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