By now we’ve all read the story about the 3-year-old boy (who was originally and mistakenly reported as 4) who slipped away from his mother and past a barrier, then fell into a moat in the gorilla exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo. After a 10-minute ordeal — and with concern for the boy’s safety — a special zoo response team shot and killed Harambe, the 450-pound endangered silverback gorilla, who some witnesses claim was acting protectively. Many of us have watched the footage, and many more have taken to the internet to blame and shame the boy’s parents. People have been so aggressive in their comments they have gone as far as to suggest the zoo should have shot the parents instead of the gorilla.
In typical fashion, our society feels a right to bash others based on very little information. It’s easy to sit behind the the protection of a keyboard, furious at the parents’ lack of responsibility. I don’t know about you, but I am definitely not the parent I thought I would be. My voice screams more than I expected it to, my patience is thinner than I ever imagined, and there have been more than a few moments where I wish I could throw my children into a gorilla pit (too soon?). Either way, I can guarantee that when that mom planned her trip to the zoo, never in her wildest dreams did she think it would have ended up the way it did.
The circumstances are unfortunate at best. To lose the life of an endangered gorilla is a tragedy, but to lose the life of a child would have been so much worse. Regardless of how wrong you may feel that mother is, or how upset you are that the gorilla was killed, the life of a child and the life of a gorilla have NEVER been and will NEVER be comparable.
What that family went through that day was what I can only assume was the worst day of their lives. Should the mother have been keeping a better eye on her child? Maybe. But how many of us have been in a store or at a playground, when all of a sudden we panic because our child slipped behind a rack or around the corner? My own son darted across a parking lot when he was 3 years old, forcing me to chase him — and putting me into an early labor.
We can say, “That would never happen to me.” Until it does. So before your words leave your lips or your fingers press “post,” take a moment to think about what that family went through that day. Maybe they have already been punished enough without ridicule and judgements from others up on their pedestals.
