WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Penn. — A deer attacked a paint store manager after she tried to take a photo of the animal standing outside a liquor store in Pennsylvania Tuesday morning.
Rachel McGough, the manager at the Sherwin Williams in East Huntingdon Township, said she spotted the doe when she arrived to open the store, KDKA reports.
“There was a deer standing outside the liquor store,” McGough said. “Thought that was pretty funny, so I took a picture of it. And it started to charge me.”
As she tried to back away, she said the doe began pushing her and she tried to fend off the animal.
“Oh my God! This deer is going to kill me,” she said. “I had a couple of bags with me that I shoved at it trying to get away. One of the bags got looped around its neck, which allowed me to get a couple feet away.”
Two Good Samaritans hanging out at McDonald’s, had watched the deer cross the parking lot and then come over to McGough, ran over and tackled the deer.
“Lucky the guys were there just in time to get the deer off of me,” McGough said. “If it wasn’t for them, I could gotten hurt. A hoof in the face or in my eye.”
The men tied the doe up, which died before the Pennsylvania Game Commission arrived.
“There had to be something wrong. Its head was scabbed over and it was foaming green from its mouth,” McGough said.
Wildlife Conservation Officer Mike Papinchak later said the deer tested positive for rabies, so the health department will contact everyone involved to see if treatment is needed.
McGough said she was not bitten or scratched by the doe, but that one of the men who came to her rescue did receive some scratches.
Papinchak said that it is not as common for deer to get rabies as some other animals, but said that there was no reason people need to be concerned about what happened.
