86-year-old Gwen Maxwell was walking outside her home near Phoenix, Arizona when she heard screams coming from behind her house. Recovering from eye surgery, Gwen was in no state to provide assistance to someone in need, but she rushed over all the same. What she saw next took her breath away.
A small furry shape covered top to tail in cholla cactus was writhing on the ground in pain. The retired school teacher assumed it was a neighbor’s pet, until she came closer and discovered the poor creature was a coyote pup. To make matters worse, mama wasn’t far away.
Maxwell called a neighbor for help and went back inside the house while the mother coyote watched over her injured pup. “He’d get up and tumble around with all those chollas on him, and it was just so heartbreaking,” she told a local CBS affiliate.
A few minutes later two employees at the Pebblebrook Golf Course pulled up outside her home. Jose Soto, a maintenance worker, and Shawn Bordine, the Assistant Superintendent, had to use a pair of pliers to remove the seven cactus clumps from the young coyote. “As Jose held him, I was able to pull stickers out of his mouth,” Bordine said. “He didn’t bite or make a sound.”
The mother kept her pup in sight, but never interfered with the two good Samaritans. Once all the cactus spines had been removed, Bordine and Soto let the little pup return to his mother and siblings who ran off across the golf course.
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