CHESHIRE -- The thought that a rabid raccoon had to be stopped before it attacked a second child spurred a Wallingford Road woman to make a remarkable decision Thursday morning.

Rather than hitting the 25-pound animal with a stick and risking being bitten herself, 40-year-old Denise Morrison instead knelt on the raccoon with both legs and then strangled the animal to death.

The rabid raccoon had come toward her with its teeth bared, Morrison said, as she and three children were walking in the woods near her home.

"It went right for us, it wasn't stumbling around," she added.

Morrison's two sons and a friend's 5-year-old son were on the walk. She would not identify the boy who was bitten.

"It had the little boy's ankle," Morrison said. "But I knew if I hit it, it might attack someone else, or me." The 5-year-old had fallen in front of Morrison with the raccoon biting the child's left leg.

Instead of hitting it, Morrison, who is roughly 5-foot-2, used her bare hands to choke the raccoon. "It felt like a long time" before the raccoon was dead, Morrison said.

Amid the struggle with the wild animal, she told the three boys to run home, where her husband called 911 and washed off the little boy's puncture wounds.

"It was so sudden. We go in the woods a million times. We know there are no crazy raccoons stalking humans," Morrison said. "It won't stop us from going in the woods. We enjoy living here," she added.

Wallingford Road has the farm-like atmosphere of Cheshire as it was 50 years ago. The undeveloped area where the raccoon attacked the group is about a half-mile from the Morrisons' house, according to police.

Morrison's husband, William, walked back into the woods to retrieve the carcass, and was met by police Officer Michael Durkee, who had been sent to the area.

"She wrestled a 25-pound raccoon and kept her cool," Durkee said. "She let the kids run away. It was what any mother would do."

"She had a lot of presence of mind," added April Leiler, Cheshire's animal control officer. "She is amazing, a pioneer mom."

Leiler drove the carcass to Hartford at about 12:30 Thursday afternoon, and the state virology lab confirmed the raccoon had rabies. "They did a necropsy and tested the brain tissue," she said.

Both Morrison and the 5-year-old boy are receiving a series of post-exposure rabies vaccinations. Morrison got her first shot Thursday and must receive four more shots within 28 days.

"The little boy is so brave, and how horrible it was for him," Morrison said. Her own sons are 9 and 10 years old.