Dear America,

For a few brief moments I would like to share my thoughts on the recent events of the boy who fell into the gorilla exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo, which then led to the gorilla to being killed. This has been a highly talked-about and highly controversial topic all over the news and social media. People are voicing their opinions about how the parents are totally irresponsible and should be fined heavily, while others are saying that everyone makes mistakes and the parents aren't really at fault, accidents happen and should not be fined. So here is my two cents on the matter, and my letter to America to tell them how I feel about it.

I am a 20-year-old college student and have no idea what it is to be a parent to small children. My friend has a niece and a nephew who are two and four years old. Just about a week before this happened we brought them to our local zoo, and even though it was a very fun time, it was a lot of work. You have to constantly be giving shoulder rides, holding their hand, telling them what to do and what not to do, and devoting 100 percent of your time to keeping an eye on them. This being said, it is incredibly easy to take your eyes off them and look at the animals yourself, or look at something other than your kid for a few seconds. Kids don't know any better, so they will do whatever they please in those split seconds you have your eye off them. So maybe the mother of the boy who fell into the gorilla exhibit took her eye off of her kid for just a few moments and that is how he fell into the gorilla exhibit. When you make a mistake as a parent or as a watcher of kids, you feel extremely bad about letting it happen, and I can only imagine how this mother felt. So I ask you, America, go easy on her because she had to watch her son be dragged around by a gorilla and know it was her fault. She isn't even blaming anyone else, mistakes happen, so just stop scrutinizing this woman.

I would also like to say that I think it's ridiculous that people are so upset that the gorilla died. I understand that it is an endangered species and that it could have just been knocked out instead of killed. But what happened happened, and the gorilla is now dead. The reason why I think it's ridiculous people reacted like this is because in America, literally hundreds and maybe even thousands of people are shot every day, and people see it on the news and say ,"Oh that's too bad." Shouldn't we be outraged at that and trying to stop people from killing each other instead of being outraged over a gorilla being killed? My answer is yes!

Lastly, I would just like to say that the boy's life was at stake here. The gorilla could have killed him. Isn't a human life more important than an animal's even if the animal is endangered? Human life and being alive is the greatest gift we have, and it seems like many people have lost sight of this fact. When I saw the story on the news for the first, time they didn't even wrap the story up with, "The boy is OK and made it out alive." I didn't even know the boy was alive until my parents told me. So I figured, OK, happy ending, until I went on Facebook to find America was in an outrage over the gorilla being shot.

So in conclusion to my thoughts and opinions on this situation, I would like to tell America that all parents make mistakes, some bigger and more public than others, so just go easy on the parents of this boy because they have already been through hell watching their son being tossed around by a gorilla. And I would also like to say it's not the biggest deal in the world the gorilla was shot, but we should be celebrating the fact that the boy is alive and they can be a happy and normal family!