85-year-old woman fights off moose with a shovel

She may be 85 years old and weigh under 100 pounds, but an Alaska woman is being hailed as a hero after fighting off a moose. Dorothea Taylor was waiting in a pickup truck as her husband, George Murphy, 82, went to round up their dogs from their morning run when she heard the pets barking loudly.

She got out of the truck, saw a moose strike something with its hooves — and immediately knew something was wrong. "I thought he was trying to kill Fellar, the old dog," she said. She raced back to her vehicle, grabbed a shovel and took a swing at the moose, who was attacking the dog.



With a few more swings — and the help of a dog — she managed to get the moose to back away. "Then I saw it wasn't Fellar the moose was after at all," she said. "He was striking over the top of Fellar to get George." She immediately tried to stanch her husband’s bleeding as a good Samaritan dialed 911.

George Murphy was rushed to an Anchorage hospital, where he is resting with a gash to his head and a few broken ribs. And he couldn't be more proud of his wife of 40 years. "Jeez, that was a pretty hard thing for anyone to do, to walk up on a moose like that," he said. "Heck, all she had was a shovel."