You’ve heard about Harambe, the poor 17-year-old gorilla who was shot and killed at Cincinnati Zoo over the weekend when a child fell into his enclosure, yes? You’ve seen the Facebook memes with the sad-faced primate, the #JusticeForHarambe tributes all over Twitter, and the stories splashed all over the news. Hell, you might even be one of the 370,000-odd people who’ve signed the petition calling for the boy’s parents to face charges of neglect.
Well I’ve got a new one for you, because I think we’re missing the point here, and it’s staring us right in the face.
Let’s not sue the zoo where the whole thing happened. Let’s not hold whoever designed and installed the barriers around the enclosure responsible, either. And let’s not investigate the mother, who – brace yourselves – took her eye off her child for a sec.
Oh no.
Let’s sue the four-year-old.
See, I think the child in question – who has yet to be identified (although his parents’ names are all over the tabloids so, y’know…) – is actually the culpable party in this scenario, and here’s why. Bear with me though, because it gets a little complicated.
- He jumped into the enclosure.
So yeah, that just about sums it up really. I say take him to court, sue him for every penny in his piggy bank – the full shebang. I’m going to start a Change.org petition right now actually*. You in?
___________
*For the record, I have absolutely no intention of suing the four-year-old. I’m merely trying to point out the absolute ridiculousness of suggesting the mother of the child (and let’s face it, the focus is on the mother – not the father) should be charged with neglect. This was the only way I could write about the whole sorry tale without filling a post with expletives or just writing the words HAVE YOU EVER TAKEN A FOUR-YEAR-OLD ANYWHERE? in shouty caps with occasional italics for emphasis. So if you want to read something more eloquent on the subject, I suggest you read Scary Mommy’s version. It’s really rather good.
We’re with the blame the parents bandwagon. We all take our eyes off our children, but by the side of a gorilla enclosure? You’d be watching them like a hawk! The children that is, not the gorilla. What we don’t get though is these parents are likely to be done for neglect… yet the McCann’s never were. Odd.
In all honesty I don’t think I’d dare to take my 3-year-old that close, for this reason entirely! It gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it. But I’m ashamed to say I genuinely could see it happening to me :-/ I think we’ll stay away from zoos for the time being…! Thank you for reading x
My first thought on hearing this story was ‘shouldn’t the enclosure have been secure enough for a four year old not to fall in ?’ The parents have no case to answer
Absolutely agree! There’s a Health & Safety rep somewhere hiding behind their sofa hoping we all continue to focus on the parents…
there are billions of people’s on planet earth, and very few and rare of this animals. so who should be shot first?