Woman strangles rabid fox attacking her in Pittsgrove

A woman trying to fend off a rabid fox that was biting her in the leg reached down with one hand to hold shut its mouth and with the other strangled it.

"It was just gnawing at my calf sideways," said Tammy DuBois as she describes a ferocious fight with a fox. The story is so bizarre it's almost unreal until she shows me her battle scars.

"It's going away but it pounced on me here and then I backed up and when I was backing up it came around and got me here."

It happened last Wednesday morning. Tammy was in the front yard of her Pittsgrove home on Almond Road checking on her birdfeeders when a fox darted out of the bushes.

"When it jumped on me it was going yup-yup-yup-yup. That's what they make they go yup-yup-yup-yup and then it's mouth was just constantly moving."

She says she tried to back away but it became even more aggressive.

"After it bit me once and it came after me and I was bleeding I figured it had rabies."

Tammy says she ran onto the porch but the fox followed and continued to bite her. So she did the unthinkable.

"I just grabbed its snout and I grabbed its neck and I went squeezing it and squeezing it. Then I threw it over here off of the porch," she said. Tammy's husband rushed home to take her to the hospital. Animal Control arrived and says they found the fox dead under the front porch.

"I was like help, help and nobody was around. I just didn't know what to do so I was like I guess I just have to take care of myself and do what I have to do," she said.

Animal Control tells FOX 29's Shawnette Wilson the State Health Department in Trenton confirmed Monday that the fox tested positive for rabies. When FOX 29 talked to Tammy Wednesday evening she was just getting home from her second of a series of rabies shots she'll have to get.