An Australian father is going viral after fighting off a group of monkeys that were going after his kids.
The footage is a bit scary, as several of the Thai monkeys bare their fangs and swipe at the father and his kids. His kids Lenny and Darwin (aged 5 and 1, respectively) were unharmed, thanks to their father’s heroics.
Riley Whitlum is the man who staved off the wild animals. He and his wife, Elayna Carasu, posted the video to their YouTube channel ‘Sailing La Vagabonde’ (which has almost 2 million subscribers), amassing 860k views since it was posted a few days ago.
Elayna was off snorkelling during the incident but came rushing onto shore as soon as she heard the commotion.
“I punched out two monkeys,” Riley tells his shocked wife. “They tried to attack Darwin. I’m not even joking.”
“I wanna say, I feel bad for punching a monkey. It was hectic,” he said before pointing out that none of the tourists who watched the altercation helped out.
“I’m snorkelling around the sea anemone looking at a fricking clownfish and all I hear is screaming,” Eleyna says. “I’m like ‘what is going on?!’.”
Riley did manage to get a couple of shots in, but he also found out he’d be needing a shot of his own. A monkey tooth was left in one of his fingers after the fight, meaning he had to sort a rabies injection.
His family headed to the nearest town to get fixed up.
“I need to have five or more needles into my wound or around it, then five shots over 20 days, then another shot today,” Whitelum explained. “So two shots today and five in my finger, and another four shots over the next 20 days.”
The father of the year ended up passing out during the injection but lived to tell the tale, rabies-free.
