After the weekend of May 28, when the story of a young boy who climbed into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinatti Zoo, ended with the gorilla shot by zoo staff to save the boy, the internet exploded with comments from people who were suddenly transformed into parenting specialists, psychics, animal psychologists and experts at running zoos.
After the weekend of May 28, when the story of a young boy who climbed into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinatti Zoo, ended with the gorilla shot by zoo staff to save the boy, the internet exploded with comments from people who were suddenly transformed into parenting specialists, psychics, animal psychologists and experts at running zoos. They scrambled over each other to reach their moral high ground podiums and express their “expert” opinions.
The boy had climbed over a three-foot steel barrier between the public and the gorilla enclosure, then pushed through some bushes before falling about 15 feet into the sunken enclosure’s shallow moat. Onlookers took videos of the male
silverback gorilla named Harambe dragging the child across the moat by his ankle and later carrying him up a ladder to a rocky outcrop before he was shot and the child was rescued.
It was a sad ending to an unfortunate and possibly dangerous event. And from their podiums, the commentators laid their judgements and verdicts:
They acted as though they have never momentarily lost sight of their children.
They criticized the boy’s parents for being unfit, neglectful and not watching their child properly. His mother was likely on her phone, and given the father’s criminal record from years prior, revealed by one news source, he was clearly unable to care for and watch his child properly, right!? “I don’t know why they shot me;
I was doing a better job of watching that lady’s kid than she was,” quipped one
popular Facebook meme.
They bashed the zoo owner for not having impassable fences around certain animal pens, for keeping animals in captivity, and for killing the gorilla rather than trying other non-fatal methods of saving the child and removing him from the enclosure. Those with an instant knowledge of animal psychology claimed the gorilla was protecting the child rather than attempting to harm him.
Yet, despite the various criticisms and opinions, those occupying the moral high ground podiums all had one thing in common: 99.99% of them were not there to witness the tragedy and the actual line of events that led up to it; nor have they ever been faced with a situation where a child was trapped in an enclosed area with a potentially dangerous animal when split-second decisions are required.
Most of all, the moral high grounders failed to realise that accidents do happen, and sometimes, no one is really to blame.
Allyson Beauregard
