Damien Timms - A rabid baboon

Running time
2 min 26 sec
Copyright
Department of Veterans' Affairs

Transcript

There was this baboon, baboons are quite aggressive, and it would hang around the hospital. And they thought it had rabies. And they tried to relocate it. So they put Valium in an orange and they gave it to it. This thing would go to attack people and had actually bitten people. The precaution was you had to get the, I think it's around seven injections, painful injections you got to get for rabies to prevent. Because one you get it, that's it as well. So there's a combination of the disease and the nasty animal. Baboons are a really aggressive animal. And you'd be walking through the hospital and this thing would be in the middle of the hallway or something and want to attack you.

I think what triggered it, one day someone saw it and went to throw a biscuit at it, like they were trying to be nice to it. And it hit it in the head and it just actually kicked off and started racing around and everything like that. So someone defended themselves and they hit it with a cricket bat. Every good Australian carries a cricket bat somewhere. All it did was stun it and make it angry, because this thing is basically 10 times stronger than a human.

Racing around and people went and hid and nothing happened. When it ate this orange too, it actually enraged it and made it get angrier. It didn't even affect it. It did the opposite. But then one day it come out. These people were sitting on guard duty in a gun pit and they were looking out and it came over the top of this roof and started attacking them under there. Cricket bat come out again and they hit it. Then they put it in a bag and thought "Oh I've killed it". They went and got someone and brought them over to get this thing, to get it relocated or just get it hidden because they were worried we've killed this animal. And then they looked in the bag and it was just sitting there enraged again and it kicked off again. So they kept hitting it with a cricket bat and it wouldn't go away. Eventually they disposed of it, I suppose is the nice way of putting it. But that was just one wild animal.

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