People who grew up on farms or otherwise being told to respect animals know there’s usually a very good reason for doing so – other than the simple not being a jerk, I mean.

OP works at a petting zoo and noticed a teenage couple antagonizing one of his llamas. He warned them that they should stop because llamas spit in self-defense, but they ignored him.

I work at a petting zoo here, and this weekend we had two teenager (around 16, boyfriend and girlfriend) who were antagonizing a llama.

I told them “you might want to cut that out! Llamas spit in self-defense.” But they kind of laughed my warning off.

Now, I knew that llama spit was a whole lot worse than they probably thought it was. But I decided not to tell them about that. I figured if they persisted, I’d trust the llama to teach them a lesson.

Even after a warning spit, they laughed and kept on.

The llama was being patient.

At one point it gave them a “warning spit” (just saliva) and they went “eww” and laughed about it and brushed it off, and then kept going at it.

Eventually, OP watched the llama let loose with the defensive spit, which apparently smells something fierce. She threw up, he ran away, and OP refused to let them inside to wash up.

Finally, the llama had enough…and unleashed its green, defensive spit that llamas are known for.

It got the girl square in the face. She dropped to her knees and started retching, and eventually threw up.

Her boyfriend was gagging and ran away, towards the building that I was in.

To make things worse for them, I didn’t even let them come in to wash up in the petting zoo’s only bathroom! It was a slow day, so I just locked the doors.

I told them I didn’t want that smell inside, and made them leave the farm without washing up.

The girl’s parents say he took things too far, so now OP is wondering if he should have let them in.

AITA? The girl’s parents called me the next day and yelled at me saying that was too harsh.

Maybe it was…I knew that if you don’t wash out llama spit right away the smell sinks into your skin and becomes extremely hard to remove, but I wanted the lesson to sink in as well.

Is Reddit going to take the side of the llama? Let’s find out!

The top comment says OP should have let them in, because now they can blame him instead of themselves.

This person agrees that OP overstepped.

While this commenter thinks OP should have put a stop to them being mean himself.

Others were upset about him allowing the animal to be mistreated, too.

Only a few people were defending every last action.

This one is actually harder than it seems at first.

I don’t know how I would vote!