BESSEMER CITY, N.C.,None — A Bessemer City woman says a rabid skunk attacked her son's 1-year-old dog before being shot to death.
Judy Waters of 306 Tryon School Road said she had just returned home around 3:30 p.m. Monday when she heard her 20-year-old son's dogs barking outside.
She said her son had just moved back home and brought his unvaccinated dogs with him. Dogs she owns have proper tags, she said.
The medium-size mix breed dog was attacked by the skunk. Two more dogs chained near it were sprayed by the skunk's fumes, she said.
"He was just chasing (the dog) around and jumping on its back and just acting crazy," she said. "It's a new one to me. Even what you see on TV doesn't prepare you for what you see with your own eyes."
Waters says that she still doesn't know how to describe the intensity with which the skunk attacked its chosen prey.
"I don't know how to put it. It was just after that one particular dog," she said. "I knew there was something wrong with it. There's another dog in the lot beside it but it wasn't worried about nothing but that one dog."
Waters' brother-in-law fired a gun once at the skunk and she said that just scared it away. It would take two more shots to kill the rabid creature, she said.
"He had shot once and missed it and it went running," she said. "But he shot it again and it took another bullet after that before it actually died."
Three days later, Waters says that she can still smell the odor of the skunk.
This particular skunk carcass was determined to be rabid on Wednesday after being examined by state laboratory officials.
WSOC
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