It’s no question that moms are dealing with a lot every single day. Packing lunches, laundry, chauffeuring kids from one activity to the next — moms are superheroes. However, one mom in Ashford, Connecticut, added fighting a wild raccoon to her list of activities like it was no big deal.
In a now-viral TikTok, Logan MacNamara is caught on home security footage fighting off a raccoon that attacked her daughter, Rylee, 5, unprovoked as she stepped outside to catch the school bus. MacNamara takes control of the situation, saves her daughter from getting any more injured, and finally flings the raccoon off of her body and clear across the yard.
Assume you would have done the same.
The video, which now has 25.8 million views, shows the raccoon suddenly latching onto Rylee’s leg, who then screams wildly and attempts to shake the animal off her leg to no avail. MacNamara then rushes to help her daughter, grabbing onto the animal by the scruff of its neck.
At one point, the fierce mother is holding her daughter in one arm while fighting with the raccoon in the other. She then orders her daughter to get inside the house. She tries to yell to her neighbors to warn them of the animal.
“It’s a rabid raccoon, get some help!,” she says in the video.
After she makes sure her daughter is safe inside, she tries to throw the animal off of her arm, but the aggressive raccoon continues to hold on.
She is finally able to remove the animal and throws the animal into her yard where it can be seen walking away a bit stunned.
Slight warning that the video could be a little shocking or traumatic to view.
MacNamara told WSFB Conneticut that she didn’t even think that a raccoon attack was in the realm of possibility for why she heard her daughter suddenly screaming that morning.
“I thought maybe she slammed her finger in the door. I definitely wasn’t expecting to see a raccoon wrapped around her leg,” she said.
And yet it took her only about half a second to grab the animal and help her kid.
“We just kind of panicked at first,” she continued. “I was more scared than anything.”
She is thankful for her home security system capturing the moment on video or else she says she would have no idea what even happened — a common thought when suddenly in a “stranger than fiction” moment.
“If I didn’t have the video I wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly what happened, it all happened so fast,” she told Storyful.
She also told Storyful that Rylee has a few puncture wounds, and said they both have scratches, but that they are doing ok. To be safe, the mother-daughter duo went to the hospital after the attack and received rabies shots just to be on the safe side.
The doctor’s main concern for MacNamara and her daughter was the chance of rabies. The raccoon was out during the day, and very aggressive, both signs of the viral disease according to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
MacNamara also noted that she was thankful her daughter, Rylee, who normally wears leggings, was wearing jeans that morning. The tough denim likely helped Rylee avoid more serious injuries.
But let’s be real, it was really her mom, Logan MacNamara, who didn’t think twice, sprang into action, and got into the line of fire against this wildly aggressive raccoon to save her daughter from being hurt.
One TikTok user commented on the viral video summed it up perfectly: “That momma bear adrenaline is the most beautiful thing!”
