The death of a western lowland gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo recently was a senseless tragedy. But was it preventable?
There has been much outcry in the wake of the incident in which a 3-year-old boy climbed into the zoo’s gorilla enclosure, was grabbed by male gorilla Harambe and then rescued when the zoo’s rapid-response team shot and killed the 17-year-old animal.
The child now is home safe, and the zoo and animal lovers everywhere are grieving the loss of the beloved primate.
As with any tragedy these days, the rush to assign blame already has begun.
To listen to the self-appointed “experts,” this was a case of terrible parenting and bad zoo policies.
Why didn’t the mother keep a better eye on the child? How could she let him climb into the gorilla enclosure? Why did the zoo have to kill the endangered gorilla? Doesn’t the video show that the animal was trying to hold the child’s hand?
And on and on it goes.
Any parent will tell you that young children are prone to running off. In a blink of an eye, a child will do exactly what the parent has just gotten through telling him not to do. News reports have related that just before the incident, the 3-year-old was insisting that he wanted to go see the gorilla. That mother also was dealing with three other children that day.
My husband tells a chilling story of his own childhood, when he got it into his head that he wanted to direct traffic at a busy intersection in his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. Imagine his poor mother’s horrified face when a police officer brought Tony home and explained what her child had been up to.
Bad parenting? Hardly. But sometimes a bad idea becomes a fixation in a little brain that hasn’t yet learned to weigh the consequences of actions.
Sadly, that 3-year-old in Cincinnati will have a lifetime to reflect on that fateful May day.
Then there are the animal-rights activists who are condemning the zoo for deciding to kill the gorilla, even going so far as to say that the gorilla’s life has more value than that child’s. Really?
Even more despicable are those who have sent death threats to the child and his mother over the incident. So we should compound this tragedy by committing a crime, too?
What all sides in this seem to need is a dose of reality. Sometimes tragedies cannot be prevented. Sometimes bad things happen to good people – and to good animals.
Harambe did nothing wrong. He did what gorillas do. Unfortunately, that was deemed to be a threat to a child, who, admittedly, had no business being there.
The 3-year-old did what 3-year-olds do. Now he will have to live with the consequences of his actions. As will his family. As will the zoo.
A senseless loss? Absolutely.
A preventable one? Of that, I’m not so sure.
• Joan Oliver is the former Northwest Herald assistant news editor. She has been associated with the Northwest Herald since 1990. She can be reached at jolivercolumn@gmail.com.