A 70-year-old Massachusetts woman is undergoing a series of rabies shots after she was recently attacked by a raccoon as she was putting up Christmas lights at her house.

Donna Sanginario, of Lancaster, said the attack happened at her Sterling Road home on Dec. 1. She estimated the raccoon that attacked her weighed about 45 pounds.

"I kept hearing this noise. I finally turn around and there is this raccoon," Sanginario said. "It was staring me right in the eye and it was huge.

"I went to back up and as soon as I did, he jumped right at me. It was mean and it would not stop screaming and I am screaming."

Sanginario suffered deep bites, scratch marks and bruises on both of her arms. She said the raccoon latched on and would not let go for about five minutes.

"I kept going around in circles and once he got off, he just jumped right back at me," she said. "We are rolling around on the ground and I am screaming: 'Please, someone in this neighborhood help me!'

"I somehow got him in a headlock and I just put him on my side, and I just kept bending over and squishing and squishing and squishing him. I heard bones break. My heart was racing so bad I thought I was going to have a heart attack."

Animal control officers said that they are not putting out a public alert for the raccoon, saying that police searched for the animal but did not find it. Therefore, the raccoon could not be tested for rabies and there is no proof that it is rabid.

"As vicious as he was, in my opinion, he was rabid," Sanginario said.

Shauna Terkanian, Sanginario's daughter, said she wanted to share her mother's story to raise awareness in the neighborhood.

"They didn't find the raccoon. I worry about all the kids in the neighborhood and the animals," Terkanian said.

Sanginario said she has two more shots to go in her rabies vaccine treatment.

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ORLANDO, Fla. — A Florida restaurant manager noticed a family was withholding food from a boy at the table,and that the boy had bruises on his body. So she wrote a simple note asking him if he needed help, and when he nodded yes, she called the police, authorities said.

Orlando police credited Flaviane Carvalho, who manages Mrs. Potato Restaurant, with coming to the 11-year-old boy's aid on New Year's Eve when the child's parents weren't looking.

Police took the boy to a hospital where doctors found bruises on his face, earlobes and arms. He also was 20 pounds underweight, Detective Erin Lawler told local media.

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"'Abuse,' I say lightly," Lawler said Thursday at a news conference. "It was torture."

The boy told detectives that he had been tied by his ankles and neck and hung upside down from a door in his home. He also told detectives that his stepfather beat him with a wooden broom, a back scratcher and closed fists, and that he'd been handcuffed and tied to a large moving dolly, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

The boy's 34-year-old stepfather was arrested on charges of child abuse and neglect on the night the waitress called police, according to an arrest affidavit.

The child's 31-year-old mother, who was also at the restaurant, was arrested a week later on a child neglect charge.

An online court docket showed no attorneys listed for either the stepfather or mother.