A quiet Mississippi morning turned into a moral crossroads after a truck carrying rhesus monkeys overturned and set fear loose in a small town. When Jessica, a mother of five, spotted one of the escapees in her yard, she made a split-second decision that has since sparked a national argument: prudent protection or panic-driven overreach? We walk through her first-hand account, the official warnings and walk-backs, and the uneasy space where public safety, research logistics, and parental instinct collide.