When I began the week I really didn’t want to write about this. The incident is just tragic, and to be honest I’m not sure it’s my business to weigh in on what feels like a private matter. But since everyone and their mother (and, it seems, their neighbor, their teacher, and their dentist) have been commenting on the boy who fell into the gorilla habitat at the Cincinnati Zoo last Saturday, I've started to feel like I need to speak up. People have expressed all kinds of extreme opinions, including blaming the mother to the point of sending her death threats, and the notion that the gorilla Harambe’s life is more important than the four year old he was endangering, intentionally or not. Maybe it’s the heat, but it seems to me that the internet has lost its collective mind this week -- because no matter what your position, death threats are not a healthy way to express it. So here I am, in the unpopular middle ground where I mostly want everyone to sit down and take a few deep breaths.
First of all, it seems to me that we are all making a fundamental mistake in the way we’re looking at this event. The human brain is hardwired to look for an active agent, a cause or a reason for everything we see and experience. In other words, one of the first things we do is look for someone to blame. The problem is, we sometimes see patterns where they don’t really exist, which is what I think has happened here. Something terrible has happened, and everyone is looking for someone to blame, when really, it was just an accident. The line that “accidents happen” may feel hollow and unreassuring in the face of death, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
Most people seem to be blaming either the zoo or the mother for the boy’s fall and the subsequent shooting of Harambe (which, to be clear, was not because anyone blamed the gorilla for the boy's fall. It as because he was endangering the boy's life, even if Harambe thought he was protecting the child.) I don’t think either option is entirely fair. As the Cincinnati Zoo has pointed out, no one has fallen into the gorilla habitat since it opened in 1978. But people who are determined to find a way will probably do so, and if there were slats in the railing, a four year old would most likely be able to fit through them. Nor do I think the boy’s mother was responsible. One eyewitness said she had her other three children with her, including a baby in her arms, which would have made it hard to catch the boy jumping into the gorilla habitat. Even if she did, as another eyewitness suggests, let go of the boy’s hand to take a picture of the gorillas (a totally normal thing to do at a zoo), I still don’t believe she was to blame. Children can vanish in moment, and do sometimes – by some reports almost 800,000 kids are kidnapped each year, and approximately 1.6 million run away. And it’s not like no one has ever fallen or jumped into a zoo habitat before. This article – aside from the astute observations about the role of the family’s race in the search for blame – also cites five other cases within the last fifteen years of people who wound up having unintentionally close encounters with zoo animals. As unfortunate as it is that Harambe lost his life over this (and I do feel that loss – despite my many misgivings about the existence of zoos and aquariums, I do believe strongly that their conservation work is important), it really wasn’t anyone’s fault. And to those who say the zoo made the wrong call by shooting Harambe, that the child’s life was less important than the gorilla’s, I will say only this; when it is your child trapped at the bottom of a habitat with an increasingly agitated 400+ pound gorilla, then you can make that call. But a good rule of thumb is that if you find yourself making death threats, for any reason, it may be a good time to take a step back and reevaluate your choices.
When I was about the same age as the boy who jumped into Harambe’s habitat (give or take a year or so) I threw open the door of a moving car I was riding in. I don’t know why I did it, other than that I wondered what would happen, and for a moment I did enjoyed the rush of wind and sunlight before someone slammed it shut. We weren’t on the highway, but we were going pretty fast. No one was hurt, but man, did I get it when we got home. My point is this; sometimes four year olds get into stupid, dangerous shit, and you can’t always stop them.
