A furious mother has criticized aquarium staff for not doing enough to help after her six-year-old son was attacked by an octopus at a petting zoo. Britney Taryn went viral on TikTok following a visit to the San Antonio Aquarium on July 14, which saw an octopus latch onto her son’s hand and refuse to let go, leaving him with severe bruises. “The octopus started to come out, up over the glass. My friend and I were not sure what to do. There’s no employees around so we started yelling for help,” she told local outlet KSAT after the fact. “The employee came up and just said, ‘Oh, she’s super playful today.’ And then he could not get the octopus off.” The worker eventually had to call two additional colleagues over for support as the gravity of the situation set in, and the three of them spent the next five minutes prying the tentacles off the young boy’s arm, leaving him hurt and shaken. Taryn later filed a complaint with the United States Department of Agriculture claiming “employees on-site downplayed the incident,” and that her son could have been bitten by the creature’s poisonous beak. “I’m just worried something worse is going to happen… I don’t want anything to happen to any more kids, any adults,” she told KSAT, before adding that she hopes nothing happens to the octopus either.
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