Brittany Boils was going about her normal routine. She was driving from her home in Greensburg to Campbellsville to drop her baby girl, Harper, off at her babysitter's house. From there she was headed to Lindsey Wilson College (LWC) where she was a sophomore. On Pitman Road in Campbellsville, she noticed a squirrel in the road that appeared to be struggling.

This is where the story gets interesting.

“All life is precious,” Boils said. “My brother was always a hunter and he always went squirrel hunting and hunted deer. I never wanted any part of it.”

Before this car ride in particular, Boils always believed this, and it influenced her actions that day as well. Coming around a curve on the road, she noticed a squirrel in the middle of it. He was crawling, a motion that Boils knew was not common for a squirrel. Knowing that the animal was injured, she decided to take action.

“I just felt compelled to stop,” Boils said. “It was just sad, I wanted to make sure it got out of the road okay.”

Looking both ways after getting out of the car, she got onto the road with the intentions of scooting the squirrel out of the road. She approached it carefully knowing that it could sense fear in people and that it was probably very afraid of her. Boils said it’s back leg was clearly broken and it was trying to crawl out of the road. She said it looked as though the squirrel was trying to do an army crawl.

The whole incident was silent, the squirrel did not make a single sound as it was crawling nor did it make a sound as Boils attempted to help it. The lack of sound did not mean there would be a lack of excitement in the moments to come.

“I was trying to help scoot him out of the road with a flip flop and he just turned and bit me,” Boils said.

He had a hold of her finger and would not let go. She flung him off her finger and off of the side of the road. “I didn’t fling him that hard, but enough to get him off,” said Boils. All of this happened in about one or two seconds.

“Wow, I really got bit by a squirrel,” Boils thought to herself as she got back in her car. There was a sense of panic that set in immediately after things calmed down. She went to the Internet to find out whether or not squirrels carry rabies. To her relief, she determined that they do not. After that she was able to calm down.

Continuing her normal routine, she drove on to LWC, but decided to make a stop at the nurse's office before class. The nurse wasn’t in at that time, but she still sought to clean the wound. Workers in the Blue Raider Sports Medicine office advised her to go to the hospital in order to get the wound looked at. She said she was fine, but the people in the office were persistent.

Reluctantly, she took the advice and drove to the local CVS in order to get a tetanus shot. They wouldn’t give her one without a prescription so she went to the hospital in Taylor County. There, they informed her that she did not need a shot and told her she was going to be fine, confirming what Boils already knew.

Squirrels are fairly docile creatures from the perspective of most people, but if any given person were to be bitten by one, they probably would develop a negative opinion about them. Boils holds no ill-will towards the creature that maimed her that day and she understands why it did what it did.

“I know it was out of fear that the squirrel bit me and I don’t hate it for that,” Boils said about the squirrel. “I hope [the squirrel] is okay.”

One can only speculate what happened to that squirrel following the incident. Boils hopes nothing for the best for that squirrel, but understands that this is not a fairy tale. If it were, she would not have been bitten and that squirrel would live happily ever after. There is nothing to guarantee this, however, and Boils knows it.

“I hate to think it was all for nothing, but it probably was,” Boils said. “Maybe it was dinner for another animal or something. I figured if it could crawl, it could crawl up a tree and rest.”

Boils would try to help the squirrel again if she were able to do it over, but she would take a different approach to it.

“I wouldn’t approach it as I did,” Boils said reflecting on the moment she was bitten. “I would probably just observe and make sure it got out of the road.”

Whatever the approach, Boils understood and still understands that all life is precious and she would do whatever it took to help a creature in need, even if that means putting her own health at risk.