Learn to live in the world

It was not surprising to wake up to a pitched battle on the morning news yesterday, concerning the little four-year-old boy from Cincinnati who wound up in the gorilla habitat at the Zoo. And the big ape grabbed him, and the zookeepers made the decision to shoot the gorilla and rescue the lad.  

And along came the accountants, sales clerks, lab assistants and computer programmers who are also zoologists and experts in animal husbandry, all howling about the plight of the gorilla.  

Yes, it's sad the gorilla had to be killed, for nothing he did was wrong.  Yes, it's sad that the child will have to deal with years of therapy to deal with the trauma he will carry.

But it's also sad that, sometimes, people who love animals feel that their love imbues them with wisdom and experience beyond the ken of the rest of us.  Jack Hanna, annoying as he is with his leather hats, knows a lot more about animals than I do, so when he says the zoo did the right thing, I agree. 

I understand the sorrow for the killed great ape.  I wish there was half that much sorrow for the fact that animals are taken from their natural environment and taken thousands of miles away to be placed in a closed environment and made into a sort of sideshow. If we really need to put animals in zoos, can we at least put up impregnable boundaries to keep the children and others totally away from them?

Because humans cause harm to these creatures, and it isn't right.

And while I'm up preaching this morning...we had another case in Baltimore the other day, when a little girl went to a creek in a park and fell in, almost drowning.  

Please tell your kids to keep a very close eye on their parents.  In the blink of an eye, they can disappear on you.  The parents, I mean.