Paraplegic woman mauled by coyote while saving chihuahua

A legally paraplegic Burton woman who intervened to save her dog from a coyote attack soon found herself the coyote’s target after she was knocked to the ground and bitten multiple times.

Lucy Mancia was working in her garden just before noon on April 17 with her mixed chihuahua dog Chico laying nearby on a deck chair in her backyard gazebo. He was recovering from a kidney stone operation just two days earlier that’d seen five of the crystals removed from his system.

She heard a yelp and looked over to see a large female coyote shaking Chico about in her jaws.

Mancia’s reaction to the coyote that snatched Chico was to head over and punch the coyote in the jaw. “I gave her a mighty Muhammad Ali swipe and she dropped him but she immediately attacked again and then started to shake him, so I hit her again,” said Mancia. “She dropped again, I grabbed the bleeding dog and shoved him up my T-shirt.”

She reasoned that the coyote wouldn’t come after her and would stop attacking if Chico was out of sight. “And then I tucked the t-shirt up into my jeans, right, thinking, well, you’ve got a fight on your hands, missus. I’m in scared mode, right? I’m in a bit of what I call the silence of the lambs. Nothing came out my mouth. It was a deathly nothing, absolutely nothing.”

The relentless coyote, which Mancia describes as an alpha-female, did not stop her attack. “She went for the hump in my stomach, which is the little dog. I, again, hit her, and she latched on and she sunk her teeth into my right arm.” The attack knocked her to the ground.

Mancia suffered from an extremely rare type of spinal infarction about two years ago, and has no feeling in her legs. She can walk, but with much difficulty, and she couldn’t get back up with the coyote clamped on to her arm.

The bite was severe. “Oh, a viscous bite. I thought I heard bone, but it wasn’t. It was her teeth. I couldn’t feel any pain, but I felt the teeth, very sharp needle-like teeth penetrate. And, of course, I thought she’d hit an artery. Instantly, a fountain of blood flowing.”

To make matters worse, the bewildered Chico began biting her under her T-shirt.

Mancia says the coyote tried to drag her towards a gulley located near the edge of her property, but only managed to move her a couple of inches. She looked over in the direction and she could see a number of other coyotes standing in the gulley. “She was trying to tug of war my arm towards the waiting pack,” she said.

Mancia says it’s a possibility the other coyotes were pups, but she doesn’t think they were. She believes the coyote that attacked her was the leader of a pack. “This aggression that I saw from this particular female … normally they’re very timid creatures. You know, you make a terrible noise or a bang and they’ll run. Not this one. This was definitely alpha-female, obviously about to give birth, or had possibly given birth. I couldn’t see from the prone position,” she said.

Mancia always carries her cordless phone around the house to call for help in case she falls and has difficulty getting back up. She went for the phone with her left hand because the coyote had a firm grip on her dominant right forearm. She managed to press the instant dial button to reach her neighbour Bev Detta, who soon drove over.

The bite ruptured a vein in her arm, which was spurting blood on the lawn. “It looked like we’d just been in a massacre,” she said.

Bev honked on her horn as she drove into the yard, scaring off the coyote and allowing her to help Lucy and Chico into her car.

Mancia had Bev drive her straight to the veterinarian to get care for Chico. After receiving the dog, the veterinarian ordered her to go to the hospital immediately. “I just wanted to save my poor little friend, who was badly shaken,” she says.

At the Arrow Lakes Hospital the physician on duty made some calls and ascertained there was no known cases of rabies in the area, says Mancia. But she got the inoculation and other preventative shots, just in case.

The doctor bandaged her up, mentioning the defensive wounds. “The doctor called me the ‘coyote fighter’, because I had a boxer’s injuries,” says Mancia, who notes that the sprains and bruises to her hands and wrists caused by punching the coyote are more painful than the bites to her arm.

Chico suffered a number of puncture wounds and received stitches.

Several hours passed while Lucy and Chico were treated, after which point they made the half-hour drive back to Burton.

When they came back from the hospital the pack was still in her back yard. “One of them was sniffing where the pool of blood was from me and the dog,” she says. The driver honked her horn and the four or five coyotes ran back into the gulley. “But the brazen female stood. She did not run,” says Mancia.

A neighbour went into the house and got pot lids, came out and banged them together, finally driving the coyote away.

Chico, who was recovering from invasive surgery when he was attacked, is still quite shaken. “Chico is unbelievably psychotic at the moment, he is really nasty,” she says. “He wants to bite me every time I go near him.” She praises the veterinarian’s work stitching up Chico, and the physical wounds look to be healing nicely. Mentally, he’s still has some recovering to do. Lucy says, since the attack, he’s been “like the Exorcist” when she goes to give him his twice daily insulin injections for his diabetes.

Mancia says she’s come forward with her story for a number of reasons. First of all, she wants to warn Burton and area residents, especially those with children, about the attack.

Since the attack, she’s heard from several residents about cats and dogs going missing lately.

Her concern, however, is the human attack. “I think she’s tasted human, now she’s going to be back,” she says. “I honestly believe that she was watching me from the gulley. And because I have a quite noticeable limp, an un-staid trait, with my feet, I think this was like – they’re very, very clever, these animals -- this is an injured person, as far as she’s concerned. … I honestly believe I was going to be the next target.”

She’s says she’s realistic about living in a rural area together with wild animals, and doesn’t believe hunting down the coyote would be a viable option.

However, she believes that government cutbacks have contributed to what she feels is inaction on the part of the Ministry of Environment due to a lack of staffing, and she doesn’t feel she was taken seriously when she contacted them. “And at the end of the day they’ve taken it lightly, and it infuriated me. As far as I’m concerned if you don’t broadcast this, or don’t get some help, are you going to wait for a child attack in order for somebody to be sent out?”

She feels that management options such as a cull or changes to hunting restrictions could be considered if the facts of the coyote population situation were known. Anecdotal evidence she’s gathered since the attack suggests a recent boom in the coyote population.

She also feels the animal that attacked her was rather large for a coyote, and says there is a possibility that it was a cross.

Conservation Officer Ben Beetlestone, who is based in Castlegar, says they were not notified of the attack until contacted by the Arrow Lakes News, saying there was little that could be done over a week after the fact.

He says the number to call in the event of an attack or with concerns over wild animals is 1-877-952-7277. In the event of an immediate emercency, the RCMP can be called at 911.

Conservation Officers covering the Arrow Lakes area are based in Nelson and Castlegar.