The Season for Compassion

Yesterday wasn't a great day for the zoo community.  First, from Britain came the tragic news that a snow leopard escaped from its enclosure at the Dudley Zoo, presumably due to keeper error, and was fatally shot as safety protocols dictated in the situation.  Then, from Oregon Zoo, came the sad loss of their youngest elephant to the dreaded Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus, a devastating killer of elephants both in zoos and in the wild.  At both facilities, staff and friends are heartbroken... and the collective community of internet trolls is sharpening knives.  

Last night, everyone was an animal expert.

It isn't just animal issues, of course.  Whenever anything goes wrong on any front... anywhere, the internet is lit up with people who claim to know what to do better and how everyone involved is stupid and quite possibly evil.  Ironically for someone who has a blog, I don't actually post much myself on social media, but I do spend a decent amount of time on it, so I see the chaos at work.  Once or twice, my zoo - and so, as I interpreted it at the moment, me, personally - where in cross hairs.

Some of the folks posting vitriol are just trolls, and you should never, ever, feed the trolls.  A lot of them, however, are mostly well-meaning people who get carried away over the relatively anonymous internet.  (And a small but annoying percentage are other zookeepers, because let's be honest, sometimes we can be a little catty with one another).  A large part of it, I suspect, is that they don't want to accept that bad things happen, either due to a momentary lapse in judgment or concentration or due to just bad luck.  By blaming someone else and coming down with two feet, they are really trying to reassure themselves that such a thing would never, ever happen to them.

I would ask that we all take a step back and try not to be that person.

Yes, at Dudley Zoo a mistake was made that had terrible consequences, and that will be dealt with appropriately... by Dudley Zoo.  Not by you, stranger from Iowa who has never even been to the UK.  Yes, the Oregon Zoo is aware of EEHV in the same way that human doctors are aware of cancer - it's a terrible disease, there is a lot of research going into a cure, but that doesn't mean that no one is trying or that every loss can be prevented.

This holiday season, and continuing beyond it, maybe we can try to be a little more compassionate in our dealings with each other.  The time will come when all of us will be in a sad situation, maybe of our own doing, maybe not, and when that time comes, all of us will want a shoulder to lean on - not yet another punch to the gut.