Arizona mother defends daughter from coyote attack using a flip-flop

<p>An Arizona mother was in her neighborhood flying a kite with her 4-year-old daughter when a coyote approached and began nipping at the child. Brittany Cardinal reported that she quickly reacted by swinging her flip-flop at the coyote.</p><p>"We had gone outside because it was windy. And my daughter’s like, 'oh, let's fly a kite,'" Cardinal said, according to AZ Family.</p><p>The incident occurred on a windy Sunday afternoon when Cardinal heard her daughter scream and saw the coyote attacking her. "I picked her up and then I started yelling at it, thinking, of course, it’s going to go away, and then it didn't," Cardinal stated. "So then I took off my flip-flop, and I was trying to scare it with that by like trying to hit it."</p><p>During the struggle to fend off the coyote, Cardinal fell and was bitten on the face. She described the experience, saying, "I always hear people say like, 'you don’t feel the pain when like trauma like that happens,' and I mean, I really didn’t feel any pain. I just felt like the pressure of it."</p><p>Cardinal and her daughter eventually managed to escape and return home, where she was treated for lacerations and puncture wounds on her face.</p><p>In response to the incident, Arizona Game and Fish officials have removed several coyotes from the area and are conducting rabies tests. They noted that Cardinal followed the recommended actions during a coyote attack, although being bitten was not part of the protocol. Alex Flickinger, public affairs community liaison for Arizona Game and Fish, advised, "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."</p>