PHOENIX — A Valley woman is glad she was in the backyard with her small dog when a bobcat came and tried to take it away.
The six-pound Chihuahua, named Larry 'Fitzy' Fitzgerald, is now recovering.
"I didn't expect it to happen so quickly," Shannon Lucas said.
VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL: Una mujer del Valle estaba afuera con su perro pequeño cuando un gato montés se lo arrebató
Shannon Lucas said she was waiting as Fitzy was using the bathroom in the backyard of their Ahwatukee Foothills home when it happened.
"Out of the corner of my eye, I see this bobcat come after him," Shannon Lucas recalls. "He squeals very loud, I like shriek, 'No!'"
The marks are still on Fitzy's neck.
"Thankfully he let him go and ran up there," Shannon Lucas said of the bobcat pointing to the top of the backyard fence. "He or she sat like on the fence for a few minutes afterward and was just watching us."
Shannon Lucas' husband, Kurt Lucas, heard it all from inside the house and he ran outside, using a long broomstick he normally uses to kill scorpions to try and move the bobcat away.
"I chased it to the wall," Kurt Lucas said. "Didn't really move at first and then I got closer and smacked the tree next to it and it took off again."
The visit is the most eventful of bobcat sightings at the couple's home but it's not the first.
Videos taken by Kurt Lucas show bobcats walking along the top of the backyard fence on separate occasions.
The Arizona Game and Fish Department said bobcats can be fairly common in the Valley and recommended doing what Shannon Lucas did, staying outside with small pets or building them a run that protects them from the top and sides, and hazing the bobcats when they come through.
"I see people using those air horns - so loud noises, spraying them with water, that usually can do the trick of they're not going to want to come around," Alexandra Flickinger with AZGFD said.
The bobcat's presence is a concern for Shannon Lucas as the couple also has twin toddlers. Still, she wants others to be aware of the bobcats for their pets' safety.
"It came so fast, happened so quickly, like he didn't have a chance," Shannon Lucas said of the attack on Fitzy. "Thankfully I was there."
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