An Aurora toddler is unhurt after a coyote jumped on her in a backyard last week.

The girl’s mother says she and her husband along with their two year-old daughter and their five-year-old-son were walking home on Sunday just before 9 p.m. after eating dinner in their neighbourhood when the kids started to run to their backyard to check on a tree they had planted there recently.

In video provided to CP24, the kids approach the tree, while the coyote sprints back from a neighbour’s yard and pounces on the small girl, knocking her to the ground and scratching her back.

In the clip, the brother runs away and the parents rush to fetch their daughter and scare away the coyote.

“She’s fine, she just has a very superficial lesion on her body but she is frightened,” her mother told CP24.

She said the animal saw her son first but probably avoided attacking him because he is bigger.

“It probably it thought (the girl) was the perfect size for it, so it just ran towards her.”

After visits with two different doctors, the mother says her daughter will not need any vaccine as a result of the contact with the coyote.

“At first she was very scared, after the incident happened she did not talk for about an hour. She didn’t see too much that happened, she just knew she was attacked.”

People in the neighbourhood have been talking about the coyote for several weeks.

The girl’s mother said a camera mounted on the front of their home spotted the coyote about two weeks ago.

Experts say if you spot a coyote nearby, do not run, but instead make loud noises and it will likely run away on its own.