I am in shock at the number of people who are upset about the gorilla that was shot and killed this past weekend; Harambe, a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo, was dragging a 4 year old boy around his enclosure, after the toddler accidentally fell into the gorilla enclosure. I get the whole being angry at the unprovoked killing of an animal, but this wasn't unprovoked. This gorilla was harming an innocent child.
I worked in child welfare for over 20 years. I saw and heard about unspeakable things being done to defenseless children. There were times I cried and times I raged. I wondered how a parent could perpetrate such acts of violence on their own children. But this act, this violent act of a wild animal harming a small child, is being called into question because the method the zoo used to stop this violent act killed Harambe.
Seriously people, since when does the death of a wild animal take more precedence than the potential death of a human child? When did human life become less important than the lives of animals?
Imagine that you are witness to an adult human dragging a small child around on the ground. Imagine that you have tried to distract that adult and he/she is having nothing to do with what you are saying/doing. Then imagine that a police officer comes up and makes the same attempts. Then that police officer realizes that words alone are not having an affect on this human and realizes that the child is being injured by the adult's actions and that the damage is only getting/going to get worse. We would expect that police officer to do whatever it took to rescue that child; up to and including the fatal shooting of that adult. I guarantee there would be no outcry for that adult who died during the life saving actions of that police officer, and I'm pretty sure it would not make the national headlines, nor would it make numerouse rounds on social media.
Police officers are expected to keep the peace in our communities. Zoo personnel are expected to keep the peace in a zoo. Their efforts saved the life of that child; in my book, that's heroic.
As for the mother of this toddler, I can't condemn her. I wasn't there and I didn't see what happened. I've only been able to find one witnesses account who indicated that the toddler made his way into the enclosure before anyone saw anything. If the mother is any kind of parent, she will be questioning herself and her own actions for a long time. This appears to be an accident, very similar to when a child darts between 2 parked cars on a street and gets hit by a car driving down that street. Tragic, but not always the result of a neglectful parent.
