Mauled by Black Bear, Woman Says, 'I Thought I'd Die'

"She was very, very powerful. And very, very angry." That's how Lee Ann Galante describes the black bear she battled in a fight to save herself and her 8-pound Pomeranian. The dental hygienist from Pennsylvania's Butler Township had put the dog, Smokie, outside around 8:30pm Tuesday. She knew a black bear with cubs had been spotted in the neighborhood weeks earlier, but they were hardly on her mind—until she heard a commotion. She saw three bear cubs silhouetted in a neighbor's tree. Then "out of the dark, I see this big bear just jump over the fence, and there's Smokie. So I start screaming," Galante says, per NBC News. At that point, the bear charged at her.

In that moment, the 55-year-old thought both she and Smokie were goners. "I just kept thinking: 'I can't believe this is happening ... I'm being attacked by a bear,'" Galante says from a hospital in Pittsburgh. "I thought, 'This is it. I'm going to die.'" The bear knocked Galante face-first onto concrete, then chewed on the back of her head. "I thought she was going to scalp me," Galante recalls, per ABC News. "She pulled so hard that it did pull the skin from the back of my ear," she adds. "I was bleeding like crazy." There was an interlude when the bear's attention returned to Smokie. But then the massive animal rushed Galante, taking her to the ground for a second time before biting her left arm. "When she was on top of me, I thought I'd die," says Galante.

By some miracle, she managed to flee back inside the home with her dog and call 911. She's now hospitalized with what her doctor describes as "pretty significant tears or lacerations to her scalp" in addition to puncture wounds and several broken bones in her face. ABC reports her blonde hair is now "tinted red with blood from the injuries to her scalp." Smokie luckily escaped with only a few scratches. The female bear was not so lucky. Found in a tree with her cubs, she "continued with her aggression" and was euthanized, police say, per WTAE. Her three cubs were tranquilized and will be transferred to another location for release, per NBC. (More bear attack stories.)