The sun beat down on the Cincinnati Zoo, heavy and unyielding, like the weight of a man’s choices. Harambe was there, in the enclosure, his massive shoulders rolling as he moved through the moat, the water sluggish around him. He was a gorilla, 400 pounds of black fur and quiet strength, his eyes dark and knowing, holding the kind of wisdom men chase in bottles and never find. He was not young, but he was not old, and the days stretched long in the concrete jungle they had built for him.
It was May 28, 2016. The air smelled of dust and distant rain. The crowd gathered at the railings, their voices sharp and scattered, like birds startled from a tree. A boy, small and reckless, slipped through the fence. He fell, down into the moat, into Harambe’s world. The water splashed, and the gorilla turned, his gaze steady, unhurried. He moved toward the boy, not with anger, but with something else—curiosity, maybe, or duty. The crowd screamed. Their fear was a living thing, loud and jagged.
Harambe stood over the boy, his hands large enough to crush, but he did not crush. He touched the boy, pulled him through the water, stood guard. The screams grew louder, and the men with rifles came. They watched, their faces tight, their hands steady on the triggers. Harambe was still, his breath heavy, the boy small against his shadow. There was no time to think, only to act, and the men acted. The shot rang out, clean and final, and Harambe fell. The boy was saved. The crowd was silent, then loud again, their voices now full of something new—grief, or guilt, or both.
The world turned after that, as it always does. The internet roared, a beast of its own, with memes and hashtags and petitions. #JusticeForHarambe, they wrote, as if justice could be typed into existence. They made him a symbol, a martyr, a joke. They forgot the gorilla, the quiet one who moved through the moat with purpose, who looked at the boy and saw no threat. They forgot the weight of his life, the simplicity of it, the truth of it.
In the end, Harambe was just a gorilla, and the zoo was just a place, and the boy was just a boy. But in that moment, when the shot echoed and the crowd held its breath, there was something more—something true and fleeting, like the last light of day before the dark comes. And then it was gone, like Harambe, like the stillness he carried, like the world he could not understand.
No comments yet! You be the first to comment.
