Ok, I'll Take the Bait- On Harambe, Zoos, and Bad Parents

So, if you needed any sign of what a miracle Barack Obama's Presidency has been, the whole world is going crazy over a gorilla being shot in a zoo, not the market economy crashing and burning to the ground in his eighth year. Indeed, a real tragedy did take place when a little boy fell into the enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo, and the zookeepers had to shoot the male Mountain Gorilla who had found him. The gorilla is an endangered animal, and killing one in a zoo is a huge hit to the ability of these gorillas to breed. Even so, I was completely shocked to see Donald Trump, an actual Presidential candidate (in itself scary), discussing the gorilla today in a press conference. I guess it has garnered my interest though, so let's break it down for a minute.

Harambe, from my view, seemed to actually be fairly protective of the child. Some witnesses seem to contradict that though. It seems that the experts are nearly unanimous on this, that the only way to insure that child's safety was to shoot the gorilla. Now, I happen to think that sucks, which is just my opinion, however the safety of the child is paramount in the world we live in. While you and I might find fault with not sedating the gorilla or any other solution, the little kid deserves to live here, so if the zookeepers say this was the only way to keep him alive, while I question that judgment, it seems final enough to me. It's just a real shame that a magnificent creature like this has to be killed because of human failure. Something's wrong there.

That something may just be zoos themselves. Some have issues with the concept of zoos, which I can understand. It's rather imperialistic of us, not shockingly, that we think we can go into the wild lands of the world and take a wild beast and put it in our captivity, for entertainment purposes. On the other hand, I do support zoos on the whole. They give humans a chance to enjoy the magnificent animals of the world. They also preserve some number of endangered species. They also give us a chance to study the animals in a safer environment. All of that aside, what good is a zoo if the animals get shot every time a stupid human falls or jumps into their environment. This isn't isolated. Why haven't zoos figured out a way to keep humans out of the enclosures, and away from the animals they are there to see? This would seem to be a basic thing to do, so you insure that we don't keep having these stories.

Finally, there is the parents. People have vilified these parents, as though they threw the child into the enclosure themselves. Obviously they didn't pay attention, they screwed up, and now they are a national story. I don't care what the mother says- she did a crappy job in this case. Their negligence, all too common in today's child-raising culture, is a part of this tragedy. It's also being blown way out of proportion. It's a mistake, a mistake I bet they won't make again. I don't think we should all find them guilty now of being terrible parents and people. That seems like a bit much.

So that's my two cents. The time is your's.