When my son was an "almost toddler", at the age where he crawled around and got into everything, we had a child-proof gate at the top of the stairs in our house. We thought the gate was enough.
We were wrong.
One night, we were having dinner in our nicely child-proofed house. I looked up from my meal just in time to see my son squeezing his body UNDER the gate. I moved as fast as I could, which wasn't fast enough.
He proceeded to fall down the stairs, bumping his head on the carpeted floor at the bottom. (I still think hard wood floors are a big mistake with children in the house. They may be easier to clean, but they create a blunt hazard.)
Fortunately, he was fine, with just a minor bruise to the back of his head. When something like that happens, you second-guess yourself as a parent. But sometimes, kids will surprise you.
Then there was the incident at the Cincinnati Zoo with the 4-year old boy and the gorilla, Harambe.
Whenever something horrible like this happens, our culture is programmed to look for someone to blame. But as this Washington Post article describes it, the boy simply got away from the mother and managed to find a way into the gorilla's enclosure (finally falling 15 feet). There is an old cliche which describes what happened: "Boys will be boys." Unless you want to blame the boy himself, don't blame the mother. She got blindsided by nature. It happens to the best of parents.
If you must point fingers at anyone, I would suggest the Cincinnati Zoo. Any place with dangerous wild animals needs to have the animals perfectly separated from the people. It seems lately there have been more stories about people jumping into enclosures with the dangerous animals (here and here are some examples). This has to stop, and it isn't the animals' fault.
It is well past time to start holding zoos accountable. If humanity is going to keep wild animals in enclosures, then the people doing it must be held responsible for what happens to both humans and animals.
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