It was a fun-sized version of “King Kong.”
The puppy-loving public is rejoicing after a cute canine was rescued from a wild monkey that had kidnapped and held it hostage for three days. A video of the ruff rescue is currently going viral online.
“It looked like it was treating the puppy as a friend or its baby, it was very strange,” bystander Cherry Lew Yee Lee told Newsflare of the hairy hostage situation, which occurred Thursday in Taman Lestari Putra, Malaysia.
The furry fiasco began the family’s two-week-old puppy, named Saru, was ape-ducted by a macaque and carried to the top of a telephone pole like a mini-version of the silver screen’s most infamous primate. The madcap macaque then proceeded to scale rooftops and tightrope-walk on power lines.
Residents believe that the monkey snatched the pup from a litter of stray dogs in the neighborhood.
In the accompanying footage, the pilfering primate can be seen moving about the trees with the Oreo-colored canine in tow while residents gather around to assess the situation.
Thankfully, the dog didn’t appear to be in immediate danger from its impromptu pet sitter.
“The puppy looked tired and weary but the monkey did not seem to hurt it,” observed Cherry. “The monkey was just holding the puppy while it moved around.” No word as to whether Curious George was attempting to try its hand at domestication a la the “dog-owning” baboons of Saudi Arabia.
Nonetheless, Cherry and other concerned citizens decided to save the poor pooch as it appeared to be starving after three days without food, Newsflare reported.
However, their initial attempts failed after the thieving simian repeatedly fled into the trees and across power lines with his adorable abductee. Thankfully, the macaque kept returning to the same telephone pole for food.
Salvation came after the dogged samaritans decided to throw rocks at the macaque, which caused it to drop Saru into the bushes below, whereupon they were able to retrieve the beleaguered doggo. The video concludes with the residents cheering wildly while cradling the canine in a blanket.
After feeding the lucky pup, they checked it for injuries, and determined that it was recovering well following the ordeal. Saru has since been adopted by a local and is currently settling into its new home.
Unfortunately, macaque-human encounters are exceedingly common in Malaysia, whose government receives around 3,800 complaints about monkeys every year, Newsflare reported, prompting the country’s wildlife department to devise a mass culling program with up to 70,000 macaques killed annually between 2013 and 2016.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Bali, Indonesia, meanwhile, roving gangs of macaques are raiding homes for food as the numbers of tourists, who used to give them snacks, have dwindled amid the COVID lockdown.
