A Child Being A Child, A Gorilla Being A Gorilla and People Being Holier-Than-Thou

This past weekend a little boy got into a Gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo, and found himself face-to-face with one of the most magnificent creatures walking the earth.  Unfortunately, in order to retrieve the boy from the grasp of that big, beautiful, magnificent and rare Silverback Gorilla, the Gorilla was killed by the zoo. 

In the aftermath, about 60 seconds of eyewitness footage surfaced showing the Gorilla in contact with the boy.  Part of the footage appears to show the Gorilla posing no particular threat to the boy, but other parts show the Gorilla dragging the boy through the water in the enclosure like a rag-doll.  According to the zoo and other eyewitnesses, the Gorilla, whose name was Harambe, continued dragging the boy through the water, and also dragged the boy up the rock walls of the enclosure, causing the boys head to be repeatedly beaten against the walls.  This went on for about 10 minutes, after which time the zoo killed Harambe in order to save the boy’s life. 

Of course this entire circumstance has gotten ample attention with outrage directed at the boy’s parent(s) and at the zoo.  Before I dissect this occurrence, here’s my take:  Once the boy got into the enclosure, there were 3 possible outcomes with 2 of them ending in either the child and Harambe being killed, or Harambe being killed.  The only option that sees both coming out alive is if Harambe moves away from the child long enough for the child to be safely retrieved.  Overall, I think the zoo has the most to answer for here because the enclosures should be designed in such a way that it is impossible for anyone to get in and impossible for any animals to get out.  And the bigger issue that needs to be addressed is why we still have zoos in the year 2016.  Finally, I love animals, and Harambe was just absolutely beautiful to me; I’m sincerely sad that he was killed. 

Now…for all of you sanctimonious, self-righteous, high-horse riding, Monday morning quarterbacks who pronounce the child’s parent as negligent and the zoo as using unnecessary force, here are my point-by-point problems with you…

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1. You think the parent(s) should be punished and that they were negligent because they weren’t watching their child???

REALLY???!  Anyone who has children (and who is honest about it) knows that their child has gotten away from them at some point.  If it hasn’t happened yet, it will.  Actually, it probably already has…you were just being such a “terrible parent” that you didn’t even realize your kid was out of your sight long enough for something tragic to have happened.  From kids running into the street and being killed by a car, to children playing in a swimming pool and drowning, to little ones being kidnapped at the park, to kids breaking the ‘child-proof’ seals and eating laundry detergent pellets they think are candy, to toddlers taking a tragic tumble down the stairs after they climbed that protective fence you put up to prevent them from going down the stairs, children (often within reach and under the watch of parents and other adults) sometimes put themselves in harm’s way despite the best efforts of the parents to prevent such circumstances.  In this instance specifically, Kimberley O’Connor – the lady who provided the footage we’ve all now seen – said in multiple interviews that the boy told his mother that he wanted to go in the water in a joking manner.  After being told ‘no,’ his mother and another lady began gathering up their other children (placing them in strollers), and in the few seconds they had their backs turned the little boy got away.  Once on that side of the fence, they tried (unsuccessfully) to get him to come back.  He refused and ultimately fell further into the enclosure. 

The truth is, if your child has ever escaped your gaze, whether at home, school, church, the playground, ANYWHERE, then this could’ve happened to you too!  For those who just thought to themselves, ‘nope, not me,’ YES IT COULD HAVE!!!

2    2. The Gorilla was protecting the child!

REALLY??!!  Ok, for the folks who saw the video clips of Harambe huddling over the boy in the corner, and the clip of Harambe standing the boy up as the child looked into the Gorilla’s face, I’ll give you a pass and encourage you to look at the remaining footage that we have.  For everyone else, I’m curious what your definition of protection is.  My definition does not include violently dragging a child through water like a rag doll (as we see in the rest of the footage), or dragging a child up a concrete wall, causing the child’s head to be repeatedly pounded against the rock (as the zoo said happened during the remaining 9 minutes of the incident that we don’t see on camera).  This is not like the 1996 Brookfield Zoo incident where the female Gorilla clearly coddled the unconscious child that fell into its enclosure; this is the dominant male Silverback in a stressful circumstance.  If a human mother dragged her toddler through water and up a mountain like that, everyone would be calling CPS.  Don’t act like the same behavior from Harambe is protection just because you’re all of a sudden feigning concern over the killing of an endangered animal.  And even if we believe Harambe was protecting the child the same way he might protect a baby Gorilla, the boy is not built like a Gorilla, and thus might suffer injuries in a way that a baby Gorilla would not.  Full grown Gorillas are 10 times stronger than a grown man.  A gentle nudge from Harambe would feel like a violent blow to a grown man.  Even that scenario is a far cry from protection.

3    3. The Zoo could have used tranquilizer darts instead of killing Harambe!

REALLY?!!!  So, you really think that shooting Harambe with tranqs was going to stop him in his tracks?  What better way to further agitate an already agitated Gorilla than to stick him with needles.  News flash, it takes several minutes for tranquilizers to take affect for an animal as large as Harambe.  Shooting him with tranquilizer darts would have potentially put the child in even more danger because it is unlikely that Harambe would have taken being shot with darts well.  If safely retrieving the child from Harambe was the goal, using tranquilizers just wasn’t an option.

4    4. The zoo is lying about Harambe dragging the boy up the rocks to justify killing him!

STOP!!!  The zoo does not want to kill its animals.  Whether you’re cynical about it and think they’re just out for money, or if you believe the caretakers are sincere in their love for animals, neither leads to the conclusion that the zoo would kill Harambe unless they felt it necessary to save the boy.  Most importantly, given what we know of Silverback Gorilla’s in stressful situations, and certainly given the dragging of the boy through the water in the footage, I totally believe the account given by the zoo.  This went on for 10 minutes, which suggests to me that they tried in earnest to somehow peaceably retrieve the boy from Harambe.  Unfortunately this did not happen.

5    5. Those stupid people making all that noise were making the matter worse, why didn’t the zoo remove them?

Ok, I thought the same thing at first, but when I heard that the incident lasted 10 minutes but we only have a few seconds of footage, I concluded that the zoo did remove all the onlookers as soon as they could.  We all know that in this era of social media, everyone has cameras, so if the incident really did take place for 10 minutes and all those people remained there, we’d have plenty more footage to parse.  From what information we have at this present time, it appears that the zoo did remove everyone as soon as they could. 

6. This never happened in all the years the enclosure existed, surely the parents are at fault.

Look, unprecedented things happen all the time; things that could have easily happened before but didn’t.  The fact that it had never happened before probably led to further complacency by the zoo in terms of doing safety updates to the enclosures, thus lending itself to this past weekend's occurrence.  This was just that perfect storm of circumstances that led to a terrible ending.

Basically everyone needs to get off their self-righteous high horse.  This was a terrible tragedy, and there is fault to lie at someone’s feet, but it’s certainly not the fault of the boy’s parents. 

As I mentioned before, the biggest issue is with the zoo, and the organization(s) that do safety checks at this zoo and others.  The fact that a child got in means that it was possible, and it shouldn’t be.  Furthermore it seems the boy got inside the enclosure quickly, meaning it was way too easy to do. 

The zoo has some ‘splainin to do!

Finally, on the heels of the protests that SeaWorld has been hit with concerning keeping Orcas in captivity, and the movement by circuses in the US to phase out the use of Elephants, I think it’s way past time that we reconsider having zoos as a society at all.  I do think there is merit to the concept of preservation of animals, but I’m not convinced zoos are the best forum in which to accomplish this goal. 

I’m glad the boy was saved, but I’m terribly sad that Harambe was killed.

-Maelstrom