Letter: Gorillas belong in the wild

Usually I enjoy David Lauderdale’s columns, but the “Gorilla or kid” column presented a totally different feeling. I was outraged at the analogies used in it for the following reasons:

▪  The gorilla should not have been caged in the zoo. It belongs in the wild.

▪  Where were the parents?

▪  Where was the zoo’s veterinarian? The gorilla’s keeper?

▪  The zoo officials should have kept it very quiet around the enclosure but they allowed for chaos to occur. Which instinctively made the gorilla want to run. Run with the child to safety. When viewing gorillas in wildlife reserves you are instructed to be silent. This would have allowed access by the keeper.

▪  Gorillas are not farm animals. They possess DNA very similar to ours. They do not come when called by a “banging a bucket on a fence post.”

▪  Yes it is not a “petting zoo,” but it is also not a hunt, nor is it the streets of Chicago. Again, another knee-jerk shooting.

Respect for wildlife is still so lacking in this country. We allow these precious animals to be shipped, bred, and sold here. They belong in the wild like a cow belongs in the pasture. Maybe Lauderdale needs to intellectually acquaint himself with our wild cousins and write about the abuse they suffer by our actions.

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 3:02 PM with the headline "Letter: Gorillas belong in the wild."