On Saturday, a child climbed into a gorilla enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo and to save him, the gorilla had to be shot. They feared that a tranquilizer would only upset Harambe and due to his increased activity, would take longer to actually sedate him. Shooting the gorilla was deemed to be the safest decision for the child.

The Internet is up in arms about the entire situation. Since the child had to be unattended for several minutes in order for him to get into the enclosure, this horrible mother must be quite neglectful. On a personal level, I beg to differ. Around the same time this boy was separated from his mother, my son was missing and I didn’t even know it. Yep.

My husband and I were in a hotel room and he wanted to run out to buy juice for breakfast. My son was whining that he wanted to go but my husband was in a rush and said that he would need to be changed first. I quickly changed my son as I listened to my baby cry to be fed. After I changed him, I immediately began feeding her and talking to my six year old about taking a shower and preparing for the day. My husband had apparently already left during all of the commotion but my son slipped out the hotel door on his own, with my having no idea that these two things happened separately. When my husband returned twenty minutes later, the front desk told him that they had our son with them because he was roaming the hallway and they didn’t know whose child he was. My husband thought I had our son and I thought that he took him along. I’m not a neglectful parent, this was a misunderstanding and a mistake. It could have ended much worse and we’re going to be more explicit in our details in the future.

When I was a kid, my parents lost us more than once, especially in department stores. It just takes a second of you lollygagging to check out a cool toy and Mom has kept on going toward the clothing section, leaving you in the dust. You try to find her and get lost further, while she’s trying to backtrack and figure out when you broke away. This isn’t an anomaly, this isn’t because of technology and iPhones and tablets, oh my! These are just regular things that happen, even if they’ve not happened to you.

I think we’re all quick to say it could never happen to us because it’s easy. You can stand on an invisible pedestal because it makes you feel better in an area where it pretty much always feels like we’re failing. Your kid wouldn’t get kidnapped by a gorilla so at least there’s that. Nobody knows about that time you stopped to tie Susie’s shoes and Johnny kept walking into the crowd. That’s because a gorilla didn’t pick Johnny up, broadcasting to everyone that you just screwed up.

Gorillas are awesome and from the videos I’ve seen, it seemed like the gorilla was trying to protect and play [roughly] with the boy. The fact that the gorilla was put down over a human error is really sad. Or that he was living in captivity at all. Or the fact that many of us are perfectly cool with eating tortured baby cows but not so much killing gorillas outright. Those seem like separate issues entirely. The bottom line of my post is that someone made a parenting mistake, one that most of us could make regardless of whether or not we think so, and it cost the life of an innocent animal.

We’re all free to call the mother whatever we wish, to circulate memes that bash her parenting and talk about what a better job we’re doing but the truth is, your mistakes could have had alternative endings. Someone else could have snatched up your little snowflake when she slipped between the racks at the store. Those tiny little legs could have dashed across a main road while a speeding car whizzed upon them. The ocean current could sweep their legs out from underneath them as you tripped over some seaweed. People should take responsibility for their actions, 100% of the time, but beating them over the head with their mistakes does nothing to fix the problem.

What do you think about this situation? Let’s talk!