The Search for Intelligent Life on Planet Earth

     News stories from the Cincinnati Zoo describe the little boy who fell into the silverback gorilla enclosure as a "fall."  Down there for ten minutes with the gorilla, in shallow water, the boy became the focus of the animal's protective instinct as people cried out and shouted above.  The boy, one of several children looked after by his mother, had told her he wanted to go down there.  While distracted by her other children, the boy squeezed through a barrier, making his way into a danger zone where he then fell into the water, the gorilla taking a quick interest.  Here was something for the gorilla to do--a tiny primate suddenly in his containment zone.
     The 400 pound gorilla moved the kid around, dragged him through the water into a corner, got the boy behind him.  Zoo officials debated on what to do.  A tranquilizer dart would work, but the knockout effect might take up to fifteen minutes, creating the probability of a pissed off gorilla also acting as a defender of a small person put mysteriously into his care.  The officials decided to kill the gorilla.
     Afterwards, the seventeen year old gorilla, having been "put down" for behaving like himself, was regarded as a helpless victim stuck in a situation he didn't choose, but reacted to normally.  The little boy's safety and survival (with a visit to the hospital resulting in a diagnosis of "he's going to be fine") simultaneously became the main concern, because human life is always seen as more important than animal life.  I don't suggest that it's too bad the gorilla wasn't tranked.  I understand the on the spot lethal motive of the zoo officials.  What bothers me, apart from the worst part of the story--the gorilla's ruination--is how the boy's stupid, albeit toddler, behavior, has been mischaracterized.
     A reporter at a press conference asked the zoo director if the boy's mother will be charged with negligence.  The director said he doesn't like to assign blame.  "Let politicians get into the blame game."
     Yes, the no blame society in which George W. Bush isn't the one responsible for invading Iraq under false pretenses, and even if he is, why "litigate the past"?  "What's done, is done," says Lady Macbeth, justifying the assassination of King Duncan.  Later, while sleepwalking, she says, "What's done cannot be undone."
     That sleepwalking mindset, the voice scratching the backs of our brains while the sunny fronts of ourselves claim always that everything is fine, and "Let it go," is conscience, but also the part of us that sees more clearly the nature of things, even when they're gilded with lies.
     The boy who "fell" into the gorilla enclosure didn't deserve to be terrified or hurt.  He made a young child's mistake.  His distracted mother didn't do enough to prevent from happening his choice of entering a dangerous place.  Her mistake.  These two mistakes combined got a gorilla killed.  If the truth of the event comes to, "The boy fell, the gorilla had to be put down," newsmen and -women, and those not thinking clearly about this, will have ignored the role of free will.  It's common these days to assume that things "just happen."  No one is to blame, the zoo director said.  The barrier keeping small children and others from entering a gorilla enclosure is, as he claimed in the press conference, "adequate," even though he has a dead 400 pound animal and a hospitalized boy proving that it isn't.
     Imagine being that gorilla, minding your own business, and then someone deemed more important than you invades your space.  You don't know what's going on, but the shouts from above are loud and urgent, fear is in the air; the little thing that plopped into your pool needs protection.  You die, believing you were doing the right thing.

                                                                                Vic Neptune