To the parents of the boy who fell into the gorilla enclosure,

I hate to add onto the long list of people who probably are ridiculing you right now. I really don’t want to have to be another angry blogger, status poster or tweet-er, but I am going to for a couple of reasons.

First, I want you to know that I don’t blame you for calling for Harambe to be killed. I am not perfect and I am not going to sit on my high and mighty horse and pretend that if my son fell into the enclosure that I wouldn’t have been feeling the same exact way that you were, but with that being said (although, I am not a mother yet) I know without a doubt that there is no way that what happened to your son will ever happen to mine.

I don’t know you and I don’t know your son, but I do know that for your son to have been able to get under the railing and into the enclosure in the first place there must be something incredibly wrong. Without being stopped or thinking that maybe what he was doing was wrong, your son managed to climb under a fence that has kept hundreds of thousand of children out before. That is your fault. Whether you didn’t have your eye on him or you didn’t teach him something that is generally common sense is irrelevant. Now that your son is safe, both of those things should be a main priority.

Second, I am sure that your family was terrified in the moment and I am sure that your family was shaken in the hour and in the days that followed, but it has been a week now and an endangered species is down another member because of your carelessness and you have yet to say a word about it. I am not an animal rights activist nor do I have a real investment in the world of endangered mammals, but I am a human being and a citizen of the world who believes that every life has a value and the fact that you have not yet spoken about or acknowledged the fact that a beautiful creature was on the receiving and fatal end of a gun point because of your incapacity for careful parenting is embarrassing and disgusting. An apology to the zoo and an apology to the community of people who are working so hard to protect these animals is without a doubt owed.

Lastly, enjoy the fact that your son is safe. Mrs. Greggs, you said it yourself in your Facebook status after the incident: “The right people were in the right place today." I do not agree with this since you clearly weren’t in the right place or your son never would have tumbled into the enclosure, but nonetheless, your son was saved and you need to cherish that. His safety wasn’t a God-given miracle but an act of human desperation that could have been avoided with multiple different measures.

The death of Harambe is on you, Mr. and Mrs. Gregg, and for your sake, I really hope you learned a thing or two from this experience.