Nobody “slipped”
My former zookeeper side is obtrusive this week. I used to know a few gorillas quite well – not as well as their longstanding full-time keeper, but quite well. I felt very attached to them. Harambe’s death makes me sad and angry, even though I don’t think the zoo could have done anything else.
The police are investigating the family of the boy who jumped into the gorilla exhibit.
That sounds kind of absurd on the face of it – they surely didn’t tell him to jump in, or want him to. But. People can be amazingly irresponsible at zoos…except that irresponsible is too mild. People will go over and around barriers at zoos; that’s what I’m saying. People will ignore all the impediments that are obviously there for reasons, in order to do what they feel like doing. The public was always by far the worst thing about working at the zoo.
That doesn’t apply to a toddler though; it applies to parents. The story I’ve seen is that there were four kids and the boy got in when no one was looking. An accident. Ok but maybe they should have been more careful than that?
A day after police said they’ll investigate the family of a boy who slipped into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo, the child’s family spoke out.
“Our child has had a checkup by his doctor and is still doing well,” the family said Wednesday in a statement released by a representative.
That’s good, but Harambe is still dead. That’s not so good.
“We continue to praise God for His grace and mercy, and to be thankful to the Cincinnati Zoo for their actions taken to protect our child,” the boy’s family said Wednesday.
“We are also very appreciative for the expressions of concern and support that have been sent to us. Some have offered money to the family, which we do not want and will not accept. If anyone wishes to make a gift, we recommend a donation to the Cincinnati Zoo in Harambe’s name.”
The continuing to praise God for His grace and mercy part really pisses me off, because it totally ignores the stupid wasteful death of Harambe. Where’s the grace and mercy for him? He wouldn’t be dead if the parents hadn’t lost track of their toddler. You’d think he was a piece of machinery the toddler got to close to.
Cincinnati police said Tuesday that their review will focus on the actions of the boy’s parents and family. It is not related to the operation or safety of the Cincinnati Zoo, authorities said.
“After the review, we will determine if charges need to be brought forward,” police spokeswoman Tiffaney Hardy said.
“If it is determined charges need to be brought forward, we would then discuss it with the Hamilton County prosecutor’s office.” The prosecutor’s office declined to say how long the investigation might take.
Authorities have said the boy’s mother was with the child when he slipped past a fence and tumbled into the moat.
Except I don’t believe it about the “slipping” past a fence. If it were that easy the zoo wouldn’t have gone 38 years without anyone jumping into the gorilla exhibit.
Jane Goodall’s response to the killing highlighted the conflicted nature of the decision to kill the animal.
“I feel so sorry for you, having to try to defend something which you may well disapprove of,” Goodall wrote in an email to Maynard.
Goodall described the killing as “a devastating loss to the zoo, and to the gorillas.”
The zoo really had no choice, but that doesn’t make it any more fun for them.
I know very little about this story because I don’t watch TV news. I understand from comments on blogs that the kid fell in and initially the gorilla reacted mildly. Then the crowd started hooting and hollering and screaming, like you’d expect, but, well, that’s a clear signal to the gorilla that there’s big trouble coming. So then the animal gets more threatening.
Is that how it happened? If so, the ones to blame are the stupid crowd!
If Harambe’s own keeper had been able to get there, would he or she have been able to get the child out (assuming no screaming crowd)?
Under the circumstances, I don’t blame the zoo at all. What are they supposed to do if the potential headline is “Toddler killed. Zoo negligent.” ?
I don’t watch tv news either but this was all over my Facebook Sunday and after, no doubt because I talk about animals or zoos now and then.
I haven’t watched the video because I can’t stand to.
The keepers tried to call them in and the two females went but Harambe didn’t. Not surprising; it’s the silverback’s job to deal with danger.
The crowd’s screaming apparently did make him more agitated, but he was agitated anyway – very naturally. It was a totally abnormal event, and how was he supposed to know what to do about it?
Supposedly the mother (and a woman who shares her name) are getting full on Gamergated at the moment.
The thing is, it’s very easy to say ‘parents be more careful’ in the aftermath of something horrible like this, but nearly every parent of an active toddler can relate a story of ‘I just took my eyes off her for a second and…”. Most of us are lucky enough to merely experience brief, private moments of terror and perhaps a trip to the ER for a few stitches, rather than ending up in the national spotlight, being investigated by Child Protective Services and local law enforcement. Eyewitnesses at the scene say that was all it was–a few second, less than a minute, when the mother was distracted by her other children and lost the toddler in the crowd around the gorilla enclosure. Four year olds have a unique vantage point to tiny, slip-throughable openings that most adults wouldn’t notice.
I’m sad and angry that a beautiful gorilla is dead, but all informed accounts indicate that there was no good alternative here. I have seen the video of Harambe interacting with the child, and I can easily imagine how scared shitless I would have been if that had been my kid being dragged through the moat. I can easily imagine how thankful I would have been to have him emerge relatively unharmed, and how that thankfulness that my child was ok would be the primary focus of any comments made to the media after the fact.
The CNN article also notes that the family do ask for people offering assistance to make donations to the zoo in Harambe’s name. They are not ignoring the reality that an animal died to save their child.
The only thing that makes sense to me—and, no, it can’t bring back the gorilla, but nothing can—is to stop keeping gorillas in zoos. And probably to stop keeping lots of other animals in zoos. And probably to stop having zoos, at least as we currently think of them.
I know. In philosophy it’s discussed under “moral luck” – a bad outcome can make a trivial, guiltless bit of carelessness or distraction seem like a moral horror. I’m probably being unfair to the parents. But saying give the money to the zoo in Harambe’s name doesn’t (for me) cancel out the god’s mercy crap.
From the witness account I’ve seen it can’t have been just a few seconds: the toddler had to go under a barrier, through some bushes, and over another barrier.
Well, a few seconds to lose him in the crowd wa’s apparently all it took. Toddlers are hard to spot when surrounded by taller adult bodies and strollers, etc. Read here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10103188713115365&set=p.10103188713115365&type=3&theater
“I was taking a pic of the female gorilla when my eldest son yells ‘what is he doing?’ I looked down and to my surprise there was a small child that had apparently, literally “flopped” over the railing, where there was then about 3 feet of ground that the child quickly crawled through! None of us actually thought he’d go over the nearly 15 foot drop, but he was crawling so fast through the bushes before myself or husband could grab him, he went over!”
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10103188712845905&set=p.10103188712845905&type=3&theater
“The little boy’s mother was on my left side with an infant in a stroller. The boy slipped away in between multiple adults who I told to grab the little boy and he jumped straight into the gorilla pit before anyone could think”
Here’s a picture of the enclosure. I don’t have a hard time imagining how quickly a toddler could wriggle through that gap and through the bushes to the edge of the moat before his parent could intervene, especially if he was obscured by a crowd of onlookers.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10103189287609075&set=p.10103189287609075&type=3&theater
Ugh. That does look inadequate.
I keep thinking about the gorilla cage at the local zoo. There is literally no way a child could get into that cage. It is totally protected. If the child happened to have a blow torch on his person, maybe, but otherwise, not. Now I don’t think keeping wild animals in zoos is a great thing, but when we do, we need to remember they are wild.
That being said, I took my child to the zoo when he was about this age, and he never got out of the stroller unless he was in his father’s arms. I don’t think zoos are safe places for kids to go wandering around.
Really short toddler leashes might be a good idea. I don’t think the parent’s were criminally negligent, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t focus on how to deal with the fact that toddlers are fast, curious suicide-machines, and adults need to assistance in preventing their success.
Used to have those. I kept my toddler on one, and was glad to have it. But apparently some people thought they were awful and abusive, so they went away.
Rebecca Watson did a good job of summing up the various camps that have formed about who is to blame and what should have been done, but unless you subscribe to her Patreon feed, you probably can’t see it:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/gorilla-killed-5567344
The camps include people who blamed the mother (but not the father, nts) for inattention; those who blamed the zoo for inadequate fences; people who thought the gorilla was trying to protect the child; people who thought zoos shouldn’t exist at all and some others.
Her conclusion is very much the same as mine. Shit’s complicated.
I always think it’s sad that people think leash-like arrangements for toddlers are abusive. Here’s a surprise: leashes for dogs aren’t abusive, and they’d be good for toddlers in some situations for the same reasons they keep dogs safe – they prevent heedless bolting. That’s the bottom line. Dogs and toddlers have no impulse control and they have little or no understanding of danger. What the hell is wrong with being able to keep a toddler close while also paying attention to other things, in situations where the toddler could bolt into danger? A leash in this situation would have eliminated the situation. It’s like holding the kid’s hand but less annoying – the kid can wander farther, just not as far as she may suddenly want to.
God doesn’t care about Harambe, because he doesn’t have an Immortal Soul. Nor has he earned eternal damnation for being born in sin.
I doubt Harambe would appreciate the distinction(s).
Samantha: That is, sadly, the most accurate description I’ve ever seen of toddlers. And I totally concur with Ophelia on the issue of leashes being a perfectly acceptable solution, when they are used with a small harness (obviously, one attached to a neck collar would be a different matter entirely).
A four-year-old is not a “toddler”. How old do we think is old enough to let a child off a harness?
Ack, god, I didn’t mean leashes attached to collars! Harnesses, of course, soft comfortable harnesses – a collar never even occurred to me. I hope it doesn’t occur to any parents!
YoSaffBridge – that’s the sort of thing parents can figure out. Some kids are more impulsive than others, some listen better than others, etc.
Zoos seem to be to be a perfect storm of reasons to harness a kid – they’re crowded when they’re crowded, there’s a lot of talk and yelling, and there are a lot of places where visitors must not go.
The parents did make the decision not to harness their child, which would be a pretty normal decision for the parents of a FOUR year old. I’ve only once seen a child over 3 in a harness, and I’m reasonably sure he was autistic and therefore a known “flight risk”.
I mean, my 5-year-old nephew walks to school every day with his friends but without parents. That’s considered normal in Germany. The idea of harnessing him, or his 3-year-old sister, seems quite absurd.
I’ve not commented up to now because I once lost sight of my 4 year old daughter at a zoo.
There were four adults in the party and five children. My daughter must have paused just long enough to get separated at a point when we were distracted. We spotted she was gone very quickly but it took us five minutes or so to find her – crowded zoo, lots of people, other little blonde girls with red tops confusing the issue, several different ways she could have gone if she’d wandered off.
These things happen to even the best parent. It’s called an accident. Anyone not had one of those? Hands up? Thought not. It’s not an indication the parent was neglectful or has done something “wrong”. It’s shit luck, that’s all. 99.9% of the time the incident gets resolved without any real consequences other than a scared child. Very, very occasionally something disastrous happens and you get a dead child, or in this case a dead gorilla.
I am deeply, deeply sorry that Harambe had to be killed. I don’t think Mom’s expressions of gratitude to god are seemly or helpful but people talk like this, especially in the US, especially after being terrified – because if you don’t have children you have no fucking idea of the new vistas of sheer, bowel loosening terror you discover when you do.
But the real culprit is the zoo. There should have been no way a child could ever get in to that enclosure. Not under any circumstances – and from the pictures I’ve seen that wasn’t even almost true. That’s not absolving parents of the responsibility to watch their kids, it’s admitting that with the best will in the world accidents happen and you have to plan for the worst case scenario always.
I also notice in the US media that a) Mom is the one being vilified – it was a family outing with Dad there and b) that certain phrases are being used that suggest the family’s race is a factor (of course, that ties into point a – a stable family structure on a family trip to the zoo is much less stereotypical than painting Mom as a feckless single (presumably welfare) mother. There are a lot of narratives being pushed onto this case that make me uneasy.
Steamshovelmama – points taken. Mind you, that is why I started this post with the bit about my zookeeper side being obtrusive – I recognize I have a bias here.
I thought the family were white – the kid looked white in the few stills I saw (I looked away from them whenever possible). I referred to the parents in the post, not the mother. I agree with you about the uneasy-making themes going on.
About zoos and enclosures – the thing is, it’s a trade-off, and has been for a long time. People want to see the animals in the open, without bars. The only way to make it impossible for a visitor ever to jump into an exhibit is to cage it, and visitors to zoos don’t like cages. This applies to lots of public places, if you think about it – they’re never 100% child-safe, because that would impede all sorts of other goals. Children can climb on escalators and fall off, they can run off subway and train platforms, they can do lots of things.
That said, I looked at the photo Jen linked to above and the barrier does look inadequate. It had passed several inspections though – I don’t know what to think about that.