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Lisa Montonati wrestled a 40-pound bobcat away from her 13-year-old daughter, Christina Montonati, along Lynx Creek in Prescott Valley, Arizona, before officers later killed the animal.

Montonati had refused when her oldest daughter first asked to visit a rope swing there, worried about the teenage boys who gathered at the spot and a rope she feared might snap. A week later, she walked to the swing with three daughters and a family friend.

A few dozen feet up the trail, the group reached a clearing where the bobcat lunged from the brush and bit Christina on the leg. Her mother said she grabbed it by the neck as it rolled over, and it bit her on both arms and a finger, leaving about 30 puncture wounds. Christina said she punched the bobcat in the head as it clawed and bit her leg.

"I started screaming and I threw rocks at its face," said her older sister, Talisa Montonati, 15, who called 911 as the animal ran off. Their 10-year-old sister, Serena, and a family friend, Lauren Whetzel, were also on the walk.

Prescott Valley police and Scott Poppenberger, a wildlife manager with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, were already investigating a bobcat that had attacked a dog in a nearby yard about an hour earlier when the second call came in. They found the animal within about 10 minutes; it charged the officers and remained abnormally aggressive, so they killed it, Poppenberger said.

Lisa and Christina Montonati were taken to Yavapai Regional Medical Center East, where they spent five hours receiving rabies and tetanus injections and were awaiting lab results to confirm whether the bobcat was infected. The family's dog faced the same possibility.

The attack followed a string of rabid-animal encounters across northern Arizona that spring, including a bobcat that attacked several people in Cottonwood in late March and two foxes that attacked hikers west of Prescott. State health officials said Arizona was on pace to top the previous year's total of 176 confirmed rabies cases. "I don't want to think what would have happened," Montonati said. Montonati said she now carries a walking stick on hikes and has no plans to return to the swing.