WILLOW, Alaska, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- An 85-year-old Alaskan woman saved her husband from a moose attack by whacking the big animal with a shovel until it backed away, police said.
The moose charged while Dorothea Taylor and husband George Murphy, 82, were out with their dogs Fellar and Tut Friday morning at the Willow, Alaska airport, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
Taylor was sitting in their pickup truck and Murphy was walking with the dogs in 30 below weather when the moose appeared.
"He was way off. Jeez, he spotted me and he started to come right after me. So I was trying to get to the truck. But I didn't make it," Murphy said.
He said he laid down in deep snow for protection and the moose came right at him.
"He started to stomp. Then he turned around and stomped again. And there was nothing I could do. I was afraid he was going to kill me," Murphy said.
Taylor heard the dogs barking and saw the moose.
"I thought he was trying to kill Fellar, the old dog," Taylor said.
Taylor said she grabbed a big shovel from the back of the truck, walked up to the moose and started swinging at it.
"So I kept hitting it some more," she said. "When it turned and started to go off slowly, I hit it with everything I had. Then I saw it wasn't Fellar the moose was after at all. He was striking over the top of Fellar, to get George."
Murphy had seven broken ribs and gashes on his head and left leg. He was airlifted to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage.
