Update on the Gorilla murder story: ZOO WITNESS SAYS GORILLA WAS 'PROTECTING' CHILD

[CincyDem]

9. And in an alternate universe...

...4-year old child sneaks into gorilla enclosure. Trained specialists, some with decades of experience virtually living with these animals daily, view the situation and determine that the only solution is the put Harambe down rather than being sedated.

Local hair dresser with no primate behavioral expertise jumps into the conversation and yells "wait wait, I think he's protecting the child".

Suddenly, the trained specialists look at each other and say..."hey, she's right. I never thought of that. Let's back off and hit him with a sedative dart. That should be good.". Then they turn to said hair stylist and say "Gosh, we're glad you're here...we would have killed Harambe without you".

So they plug him with the sedative and his immediate reaction is to start thrashing around, pounding the child on a rock like Judge Judy with her gavel on a bad day...all captured on video by a dozen other experts (aka zoo visitors) in the gallery. Eventually, after 4-5 minutes of thrashing around, the sedative takes effect and Harambe falls to his knees in the stream and finally keels over - trapping what's left of the child under him in the water.

Zoo director goes on TV to defend the team's action saying "we sought outside input that was, in hindsight, less than informed and we're deeply distraught over the child's death at the hands of one of our animals."

So...what's the right approach ? In either situation, the real world or the alternative universe - was Harambe going to live to see sunset (because my bet is that he wasn't going to be long for the world after whooping the kid on the rocks in the alternate universe).

In this unfortunate situation, the best thinking made the decision. It wasn't a perfect decision, just the best. Others, often without the benefit of facts or an ability to understand the facts might offer a different interpretation that feeds other agendas but, in the end, in a binary decision of "save the kid vs. save Harambe"...they made the right choice. Unfortunately, not the perfect choice.