A US mother was forced to fight off a wild raccoon after it attacked her five-year-old daughter outside their house.
Schoolgirl Rylee MacNamara was standing outside her Connecticut home on Friday (local time) when the raccoon ran up and attacked her.
Security footage shows Rylee standing by the door when the raccoon launches itself at her and sinks its claws into her leg.
The schoolgirl can be seen screaming and repeatedly trying to kick the animal off to no avail.
The animal continues to cling to Rylee's leg until her mum Logan runs out and pries it off.
Logan can then be seen holding the animal at arm's length while telling Rylee to, "Go inside and get help".
This doesn't deter the animal though, who starts clinging furiously to Logan's arm.
She tries to fling the raccoon off but it stays put until she eventually manages to hurl it into the yard and run inside.
The racoon then ambles off while Rylee can be heard crying inside the house.
"I was going out to get on the bus and a raccoon was there and tried to attack me," Rylee told local news site WFSB. "It was wrapping its arms around my leg. It really hurt."
Both Rylee and Logan went to the hospital for rabies vaccines as a precaution, according to WFSB.
Logan told the outlet she initially thought Rylee had slammed her finger in the car door and was shocked when she saw the raccoon.
"I definitely wasn't expecting to see a racoon wrapped around her leg. We just kind of panicked at first. I was more scared than anything," she told WFSB.
