BARNSTABLE, Mass. (AP) – A Cape Cod woman who was bitten on her left hand is believed to be the first person ever attacked by a rabid coyote in Massachusetts, according to state wildlife officials.

Cindy Parker-Kelley was attacked by a 45-pound female coyote in her back yard Thursday when she went to check on her Norwegian elkhound, Dakota.

Her husband, David Kelley, beat the coyote with a piece of lumber, and police later killed it.

She’s just the second person ever attacked by a coyote in the state, wildlife officials told the Cape Cod Times.

The state’s only other recorded attack on a human by a coyote also occurred on Cape Cod. A coyote snatched a 3-year-old boy from a swing set in Sandwich in 1998, but his mother intervened and the boy was not badly injured. It’s unknown if that coyote had rabies.

Parker-Kelley’s husband heard her screams Thursday morning and rushed to the back yard in his underwear.

“The coyote was hanging off my wife’s arm,” he said.

Kelley, executive chef at the Naked Oyster in Hyannis, used the lumber from his garage and swung repeatedly as the coyote lunged at him, hitting it seven or eight times before it stopped.

“He’s my knight in shining armor,” Parker-Kelley, 44, said of her husband. “Thank God he was home.”

Barnstable Police spokesman Sgt. Sean Sweeney said a police officer who responded to the couple’s 911 call shot the coyote. He said state health department tests Thursday found the animal had rabies.

Parker-Kelley was taken to Cape Cod Hospital for treatment and released. She began rabies treatment.

The dog, which was tethered to a run in the backyard of their Marstons Mills home, was uninjured.

From 1992 to 2002, only six of 65 coyotes tested for rabies in the state were positive, said Tom O’Shea of MassWildLife, a division of the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.

AP-ES-02-18-05 0728EST