Imagine your children wake you up early one Sunday morning with the warning, “Mom, I think I saw a monkey running through our yard!” It might be hard to believe—unless you’d just heard the news that aggressive monkeys, rumored to be infected with STDs, had escaped a semi-truck crash nearby.

Thirty-five-year-old Jessica Bond Ferguson believed her teenager and called the police immediately. The police told her to keep an eye on the stray animal. “If it attacked somebody’s kid, and I could have stopped it, that would be a lot on me,” she said. “It’s kind of scary and dangerous that they are running around, and people have kids playing in their yards.”

The monkeys weren’t diseased—but they are aggressive

So Bond Ferguson stepped outside with her cellphone and her gun. “I shot at it, and it just stood there, and I shot again, and he backed up, and that’s when he fell,” she said. “I did what any other mother would do to protect her children.”

Later reports clarified that the monkeys were not infected with any diseases. They had been bred at Tulane University’s National Primate Research Center in New Orleans and were being transported to scientific research organizations. But even healthy rhesus macaques can be dangerous. The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks issued a warning that the species is “known to be aggressive.”

In total, 21 monkeys escaped during the truck crash. Thirteen were collected at the scene, five were killed as police and locals searched for them, and three were still at large when Bond Ferguson made her call.