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Somerville woman describes violent raccoon attack

“I kept pushing it away, and it kept coming at me and coming at me."

A raccoon climbs the walls of an enclosure at Newhouse Wildlife Rescue. Jessica Rinaldi / The Boston Globe, File

July 30, 2025

1 minute to read

A Somerville woman was attacked by a raccoon after opening her back door at 1 a.m on Saturday.

Katharine VanBuskirk woke up in the middle of the night to get water and was about to let her dogs out onto her deck when a raccoon jumped on her, she told Boston.com.

She said the raccoon scratched her eye first, causing blood to block her sight and run down her face.

“I kept pushing it away, and it kept coming at me and coming at me,” VanBuskirk said.

Recovering from a recent shoulder replacement, VanBuskirk fought off the raccoon with her one good arm, eventually throwing it off her deck and reentering her home.

The raccoon bit VanBuskirk three to four times, once on each hand and once in the calf, she said.

Soon after she reentered her home, she called 911, and emergency personnel arrived at the scene soon after.

“There was blood everywhere, and we couldn’t find the little dog, and that was the most difficult part,” she said about her and the woman helping her with her recovery from surgery.

VanBuskirk was transported to Mount Auburn Hospital via ambulance where she received the first of four rabies vaccines and doctors tended to her wounds. She is thankful there was only superficial damage to her eye and that her dog was located while she received treatment.

“I will probably never let my dogs out in the middle of the night again,” she said.

While VanBuskirk hadn’t seen a raccoon in 15 years, she knew they are around the Davis Square area and noted that her compost bin, located below her deck, had been knocked over by an animal the day prior to the attack.