They were the sole survivors in this beastly battle.
A Surprise, Ariz., mom took on an vicious coyote armed with nothing but a flip-flop — after the wild animal attacked her four-year-old girl.
“We had gone outside because it was windy. And my daughter’s like, ‘Oh, let’s fly a kite,’” mom Brittany Cardinal told WWNY-TV of the Sept. 6 afternoon.
But in a matter of seconds — their innocent afternoon turned into a terrifying fight for survival.
Cardinal said she suddenly heard her daughter scream. She spun around — and saw a coyote nipping at the defenseless child.
That’s when she swung into action.
“I picked her up, of course,” said Cardinal, 35. “And then I started yelling at it, thinking, of course, it was going to go away, but then it didn’t.”
The coyote didn’t budge.
And neither did mom.
Acting fast, she grabbed the flip-flop off her foot and began wildly swinging it at the crazed beast, still screaming at the top of her lungs, desperately trying to scare it off.
“There was no hesitation at all. I don’t even think I thought about anything. I think you, like a mom, try to protect your kid,” she remembered.
But during those frenzied moments, she fell to the ground. That’s when the coyote lunged — clamping its jaws onto the brave mom’s face.
“I always hear people say, ‘You don’t feel the pain when trauma like that happens,’ and I mean, I really didn’t feel any pain. I just felt like the pressure of it,” Cardinal said.
Even injured and bleeding, she continued to battle for their lives.
Cardinal and her daughter were finally able to back away from the beast and make a run for their home and help.
The maddened mom suffered lacerations and puncture wounds to her face, but thanks to her quick thinking, her daughter came through the harrowing ordeal unharmed.
Arizona Game and Fish officials told the news station the bizarre attack was the first recorded coyote attack on a person in the Phoenix area since December 2023, and they don’t know what triggered it.
Wildlife officials have removed several coyotes from the area and are testing them for rabies.
Cardinal did exactly what a person should do if a coyote attacks.
“You fight back, you yell at the animal, be loud with it, throw rocks, whatever you have to do to get that animal to just run off,” said Alex Flickinger, public affairs community liaison for Arizona Game and Fish.
Cardinal’s not taking another chance. She’s now armed with pepper spray — at all times.
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