It’s her fault. She should’ve done something. Stopped him. Grabbed him. Why wasn’t she watching? How did he climb up and fall in? Poor parenting. Blame blame blame. Hate mail. Death threats. Blame blame blame. Online abuse. Protests. Blood boiling anger. More blame.

We are all devastated by the horrific and tragic ending that saw the death of beautiful Harambe, a 17-year-old western lowland endangered gorilla being shot at Cincinnati zoo this week. This majestical beast should still be alive. It should never have happened. But it did.

We are mourning the loss of this incredible species and everyone is an animal behaviourislist/zoologist/parenting expert/ zoo keeper with their vitriolic 10c worth to add to the shitstorm that’s brewing on social media like a southern hurricane.

Why didn’t they tranquilise him? He was protecting the child, not harming him. He wouldn’t hurt the child….ahh, hindsight its so much easier from the heights of an ivory tower isn’t it? I mean we know better right? Of course we do. Perfect, every single one of us.

Animal experts are there for a reason. What might seem like a simple solution to us could have held more harrowing results.

Yes, it was his habitat. Yes the child fell into it. Could they have risked a ‘wait and see what he does’ attitude. No. Unfortunately for Harambe, the risk to human life was greater than his own.

We want answers. Want someone to blame. To pay with their guilt…but really is a witch hunt for the head of the woman whose child was being flung like a rag doll by this beautiful primate the answer?

If the internet trolls are anything to go by, then yes. People want their blood. There are petitions for the little boy’s mother to have her child removed from her care. She’s a terrible parent. I mean she has to be, right?

Shit if it were any of us there’s no way in hell we’d ever let our kid out of our sight long enough to climb up into the enclosure of a 220kg wild gorilla. Not a shitshow. Fuck no, eyes in the back of our head, at all times.

The mother of this little boy should have been watching her kid. No question.  He should never have been able to climb up there in the first place, this is true. But really…this much hate? Judgement? Persecution? Imagine if it was your child in there, his tiny body being tossed around. Would you want to ‘consider the options’? I suspect not. They had to act quickly. They did. The aftermath was catastrophic but was the only outcome to a tragic course of events.

She has suffered death threats, been stalked, harassed, abused – even her workplace has had to shut down their accounts due to a meltdown of tirades from angry revenge seekers. And look out if you share the same name as this woman, cos hell for leather you’re in the firing line too.

At times we get so bloody caught up in the clutches of a social media furore ‘damn them, they must suffer’ mentality you’d be forgiven for thinking we were back in the times of public stonings.

There’s no doubt about it this woman was fucking irresponsible and a beautiful animal died because of it. But deliberate it was not. She fucked up. No amount of public abuse and shaming from behind keyboards will bring him back to life. Time to stop blaming this mother who is only too glad her boy is safe and leave it well enough alone. Nobody wanted this outcome. Ever. #restinpeaceharambe