A coyote in Yellowstone National Park was shot and killed after biting two people near Old Faithful just before Christmas.

The young, scrawny female coyote stole a woman's pack in front on the Old Faithful Snow Lodge on Dec. 23, Colin Campbell, a deputy superintendent at Yellowstone, said Monday. Her family got the pack back and threw snowballs at the coyote to try to scare it away. The coyote, though, doubled back and bit the woman on the ankle, puncturing the skin and leaving scrapes on her foot, and then left, Campbell said.

Rangers soon learned that a Yellowstone Association employee skiing was bitten on the lower leg by the same coyote. She whacked it with a ski pole, but the coyote only went a short distance away.

The two incidents happened 10 to 15 minutes apart.

"Its behavior was not at all normal," Campbell said.

A park ranger and a maintenance worker lost sight of the coyote but tracked it to an area where it could be safely shot with a handgun. Its body was taken to the Montana Department of Livestock's veterinary lab, where technicians expedited tests for rabies on Christmas Eve. The results were negative.

"Both victims were greatly relieved to hear that," Campbell said.

There was no food in the pack that the coyote took and no indication that it had been in trouble before, Campbell said.

When an animal attacks a person, Campbell said, "we just can't tolerate that."