It’s being called the greatest story of 2017. Rachel Borch was out for a jog in the woods near her home in Maine when a raccoon, hell bent on her destruction, attacked her. What followed was something straight out of a horror movie.
This story of a runner drowning a raccoon in self-defense has so many twists
She’s a vegetarian, too!
Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
The 21-year-old told BDN Maine that she noticed the raccoon on the trail, but it refused to run away. Instead it bared its teeth and began to charge.
“I knew instantly it had to be rabid,” said Borch, who remembers ripping out her headphones and dropping her phone on the ground.
The animal attacked her on the narrow path, and there wasn’t enough room to get around it. Borch made a difficult decision — she was going to fight the rabid raccoon.
The raccoon sank its teeth into Borch’s thumb and “wouldn’t let go.” Its paws were scratching her arms and legs wildly as Borch screamed and cried.
In a matter of seconds, Borch, who could not unhinge the raccoon’s jaw to shake it off her hand, noticed that when she had dropped her phone, it had fallen into a puddle in the path and was fully submerged.
Alone, and with no help in sight, she was in a fight for survival with a trash panda gone wrong. It continued to bite and claw her, and the reality set in for Borch that trying to strangle the animal wouldn’t be an option.
“I didn’t think I could strangle [the raccoon] with my bare hands,” she remembers thinking, but holding it under the water might do the trick.
Connecting the dots quickly, Borch, then on her knees, dragged the still biting raccoon, which was scratching frantically at her hand and arms, into the puddle.
“With my thumb in its mouth, I just pushed its head down into the muck,” Borch said.
The tactic worked, and after what felt like an eternity the raccoon was dead. Running home, Rachel met her mother and the pair drove to seek medical attention. Later the raccoon’s corpse would be recovered by animal control, where it did test positive for rabies.
People are being warned in the area to stay alert, as there could be more rabid raccoons in the area. It was a horrifying moment for Rachel, who has never had to do anything like this before.
“If there hadn’t been water on the ground, I don’t know what I would have done,” Borch said of drowning the animal. “It really was just dumb luck. I’ve never killed an animal with my bare hands. I’m a vegetarian. It was self-defense.”
Thankfully Rachel is OK, and still undergoing treatment for rabies. Let her story serve as a road map for anyone attacked by a rabid animal while on a run.
