I'm not sure if y'all have read or heard about this story, as it happened pretty recently, but everything about it is so fucked up, I thought I should have a mini (or maxi) rant about it. This Insta post pretty much summarises my thoughts and sentiment regarding the event, but I thought I should elaborate on it a little. After all, no matter how short a mini rant is, it can't be comprised of only an image.

This news story is a great example of how idiotic human beings can be—it's not the first time people "fall" into animal enclosures and either get themselves, the animal killed, or both. In fact, shit like this happens more often than it should. Just the other week, at Santiago Zoo in Chile, a man stripped naked and, with the intent to commit suicide, threw himself into a lion's cage. Not only did he get mauled alive (I won't link a video because it's very violent) but also resulted in two lions—a male and a female—getting put down. Years ago there was a story about a woman who stuck her arm into a wolf's cage because she wanted to "experience the wolf", and ended up in the hospital with a chewed off arm.

I could keep listing events, but the underlying message is clear: even though human beings are the ones that initiate contact with wild animals, who behave on instinct (if I was a lion and so a nice and juicy human, I'd move in for the kill), the poor creatures are always the ones that get put down in the end. Unsurprisingly, the people that cause this (and survive) never get charged for it, at least as far as I know.

Look at me, getting heated already and I haven't even gotten to the actual rant.

For those of you who are completely clueless about the story of Harambe the gorilla, I've attached a vid on top of the event. This will help you formulate your own view on the sequence of events, and even though it doesn't show what happened before and after, it gives you a good idea about how badly the entire thing situation was handled.

A lot of news headlines say that the boy allegedly "slipped and fell" into a gorilla enclosure, that the gorilla was "tossing him all over the place", and that killing the animal was the "only course of action." But y'all know how fake the media is, tryna twist the events as to victimise the perpetrators and shit, so I'm going to serve you the real tea.

*fills kettle with water*

1. "Slipped and fell"

Funny how news outlets like to use euphemisms to explain people's idiocy.

One does not simply slip and fall into a gorilla enclosure. The kid (who I think is three/four-years-old) went under a rail, through wires and over a moat wall to get into the enclosure. That isn't exactly slipping and falling is it? It's not that the kid slipped down a stream of oil, got his foot caught in a stray tree root, and got catapulted into the fucking thing.

Honestly, I don't blame the child, who behaved like any preschooler would. I blame the parents for being extremely negligent—they try to justify the fact that their kid got away by saying that they had other three kids to take care of, but that sounds like a half-assed excuse to me. I'm almost 100% sure that the parents were talking shit while they let their kids run loose like animals.

Not only that, the time it took for the kid to get away and get into the enclosure should've been enough for the parents to go after him and stop him from getting through. It's not like a three/four-year-old can run like Usain Bolt. Come on. Another  question is, the people who saw this kid climbing into the enclosure, why did they just stand by and watch? Why did they just record the event instead of intervening?

The zoo claims that its the first breach of the gorilla enclosure in 38 years of its existence. Cincinnati zoo director Thane Maynard also said, "The barriers are safe. They exceed any required protocols. The trouble with barriers, whatever the barrier is, some people get past it. The zoo is not negligent."

Why do people decide to climb over the walls? Because they're goddamn idiots, that's why.

The parents should be criminally responsible for what happened, instead of trying to point fingers everywhere but at themselves. It's the parents responsibility to take care of their children, and if something happens to them, there's nobody to blame but themselves. The funniest part is when the mother was screaming, "Mommy is here! Mommy is here!" Bitch where were you when your kid was climbing into the fucking gorilla habitat? Mhm, not there. Wonder what you're going to do by screaming and agitating the animal further. 

Harambe was a Western Lowland gorilla, a species which is critically endangered in the wild, with less than 175,000 members. Funny how we destroy the habitat of these creatures, lock them up in zoos, then kill them off when someone is too stupid to look after their brats.

*pours water into a teacup and adds a teabag*

2. "Tossing him all over the place."

The first thought that came to mind was: 

But that's totally not even close to what actually happened. If you watch the vid carefully, you can actually see the gorilla shaking hands with the kid, and even pull his pants up. Only once the surrounded crowd started screaming hysterically (don't they know that animals can sense fear? Screaming like a madman won't make things any better) did the gorilla start dragging the kid across the water and bring him up to a raised area, to what it thought was safety.

The gorilla would've never attacked the child because it knew that it was defenseless, instead seeing it as its own—if it really wanted to kill the kid, it would've done so the moment it fell into the enclosure. Look at any news outlet, and you'll see that they'll make the gorilla look like some kind of murderer—I understand that it's a wild animal, and that it's behaviour can be a little unpredictable, but approaching it screaming bloody murderer and flailing your arms won't make the situation any better. 

*intense eyeroll* 

*allows the tea to brew, removes the teabag, and adds a heaping spoon of sugar*

3. "Only course of action."

Sounds familiar right? Apparently, pulling out a gun and killing a living being is the only ever course of action. Kind of like American police officers—they're trained to use batons and tasers, but whenever they feel "threatened" they always whip out their gun like their dick and start waving it all over the place. Disgusting. 

Some say that they could've simply sedated the beast, but it's understandable why they didn't go for that option. It could've taken more than one shot and about 10 to 15 minutes for the thing to kick in, and the animals could've gotten pissed off and batted the child away like a tennis ball.

But there's one thing I don't understand: what are the zookeepers trained to do? Is their job comprised of only shovelling shit into nice little piles and tossing grain to the chickens? It doesn't make any sense to me. These people should be trained to handle emergencies like that—I don't care if it never happened in the zoo itself. It's happen in the past in OTHER zoos, so the staff should be trained to handle disasters. Especially when dealing with a critically endangered animal. 

Ian Redmond, chairman of The Gorilla Organization, said zookeepers had other options.

"When gorilla or other apes have things they shouldn't have, keepers will negotiate with them, bring food, their favorite treats, pineapple or some kind of fruit that they don't know and negotiate with them."  But hey, it's best to just kill the thing, because it's just a fucking endangered gorilla. Who gives a shit, right?

*sips tea* *smacks lips*

-:-

So there you have it; this turned out to be a maxi rant instead of a mini rant, but who cares, fuck yo rules.  

Am I a cold-hearted, senseless bitch? Yes. But is it because of my opinion on this story? No.

What angers me is not only the fact that the zoo was completely INCAPABLE of handling such a critical situation correctly, but also the fact that the parents were so fucking negligent and almost got their kid killed. There are people that get their kid taken away by social services for locking them in their car in the middle summer, yet, they let their kid escape into a gorilla enclosure and nobody bats an eye. The kid could've snapped his neck on the way down, bashed his brains against the concrete, and never make it out of there alive. I think what really disgusts me is how they valued one life over the other, when, in reality, both lives were equally as important. The priority of the zoo was to ensure that BOTH living beings survived the fiasco.

What are your thoughts? Did Cincinatti zoo handle the situation correctly, or could they have done a better job? Should the Mother be criminally charged for negligence? Comment below! 

Bibliography:

Park, Madison, Emanuella Grinberg, and Tiffany Ap. "'We'd Make the Same Decision,' Zoo Director Says of Gorilla Shooting." CNN. Cable News Network, 31 May 2016. Web. 31 May 2016.

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Is there something that you're itching to complain about, but have the good sense not to do so on a public forum? I can do it for you! Feel free to PM me with the topic you want me to rant about, and I won't think twice before adding it here. I'll be waiting!