A bizarre confrontation between a Walmart employee and a diaper-wearing monkey has gone viral since it was posted to Facebook Sunday night.
Lancaster, Ohio resident Richelle Stewart says she shot the footage in the parking lot of the Walmart on North Memorial Drive. Stewart says the incident occurred as she was arriving at the Walmart Sunday evening with her husband.
“I saw the monkey and he was just standing on the carts, and this lady was trying to come over and get him,” Stewart told WCMH News in Columbus, Ohio. “The monkey had escaped from a nearby camper. And we saw the cart guy from Walmart coming over to help her.”
In the video, the monkey is seen accosting the unidentified employee near the shopping cart disposal area for a few seconds, as the monkey’s owner runs over.
“Let her go, let her go!” the woman can be heard shouting. “Did she bite you?”
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Woman and monkey then retreat to the woman’s nearby trailer.
In a statement to local media, a spokesperson for Walmart said the store employee was not bitten during the altercation, which began when the employee noticed the monkey had escaped from the woman’s camper.
In a separate statement, the Ohio Department of Agriculture says they are trying to track down the woman out of concern her pet monkey may not be registered.
The video has gone viral since it was posted to Stewart’s Facebook page, having been shared nearly 6,000 times since it was posted late Sunday.
“When we posted it on Facebook, we did it for fun,” Stewart said. “We go to Walmart, we moved to Lancaster and there’s a monkey.”