A woman who stopped to help after a truck carrying 100 lab monkeys crashed in Pennsylvania fears she's caught an illness after one of the macaques hissed in her face, leaving her with pink eye symptoms.
Michelle Fallon, from Danville near Scranton, was driving directly behind the vehicle when it crashed, throwing animal crates all over the highway and smashing some to pieces. Three of the macaques escaped and went on the run, but all have since been captured and humanely euthanized. All of the other monkeys - who'd arrived in the US from Mauritius that morning, and were en route to a lab, have been accounted for.
Fallon has now had a rabies shot, and wrote about the symptoms she has since suffered on Facebook - and also told PA Homepage that she'd developed symptoms of pink eye - an inflammation or infection of the eye ball.
She said: 'I was close to the monkeys, I touched the crates, I walked through their feces so I was very close. So I called (a helpline) to inquire, you know, was I safe?
'Because the monkey did hiss at me and there were feces around, and I did have an open cut, they just want to be precautious.'
Fallon said she got out to help both the driver and the animals in their cages, initially believing them to be cats. When she approached and put her hand on the cage, she says the monkey hissed at her.
The day following the accident, Fallon suddenly developed a cough and pink eye, which became so bad that she had to visit the emergency room at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville.
Fallon has been told to keep a close eye on her health for the next month in case she develops any infectious disease as a result of being so close to them.
The test monkeys were on their way to a laboratory in Florida when the truck crashed into a garbage truck.
No comments:
Post a Comment