A Tale of Two Monkeys

Recently up here in the NYC area we had an awful bit of excitement when a chimpanzee went wild(fn1) and mauled a lady, taking out her face and very nearly killing her. Police shot the chimpanzee dead.

An interesting side-note to the story was that the chimp's mother had also been shot after going wild but the circumstances were different in what I think is a fairly illuminating way. You see, the chimp's mother didn't actually maul anyone. In that case, the chimp started acting in a threatening manner and someone got a gun and shot it before it hurt anyone.

So what happened to that person? Oh, they were put in jail, of course. You see, the chimp hadn't done anything wrong. Its owner said they should have just hidden inside and let the chimp cool down, they didn't have to shoot it.

I am 100% sure if someone had shot the latest chimp just prior to its ruining of the woman's life, that person would likewise have been condemned for attacking an innocent animal.

Much of life is like this: you cannot prove a negative so you will be pilloried for taking actions that you feel are preventing worse outcomes. And you are more likely to face disapprobation the more successfully preventative your actions are.

Please note that I am not saying that we need to always err on the side of "shooting the chimp"(fn2), I am merely pointing out, as someone must, that the world is a complicated and messy place and there are no easy answers.

fn1: Any time a wild animal in captivity snaps and hurts someone I am reminded of Chris Rock's memorable nsight when Siegfried and Roy's tiger mauled whichever of them it mauled:

Sigfried and Roy, man, the tiger bit the man in the head and everybody's mad at the tiger. Talking about 'The tiger went crazy.' That tiger didn't go crazy, that tiger went tiger! You know when the tiger went crazy? When the tiger was riding around on a little bike with a Hitler-helmet on!

Classic. You can see it here at about 1:20 in.

fn2: Though I do think "shooting the chimp" would make an excellent candidate for a phrase to popularize. I picture it working like this:

Two guys at a party immediately after one has cut his friend off as he was about to say something stupid in front of a girl...

Guy 1:"Why the hell did you do that, man??"

Guy 2:"Just shooting the chimp."(fn3)

fn3: I must confess, though, to never having had the stick-to-it-iveness to follow through on my phrase popularization schemes. A couple friends and I thought the phrase "compensating for bullet drop", which originally refers to snipers having to aim far above their targets to hit them after the effects of gravity, would make for an equally good pop-phrase. Actually, I still do, I'm going to try to work that into conversation over the next few weeks.