The White House has posted on social media a tribute to mark Thursday’s 10th anniversary of the death of a figure it called “a true patriot”.
The hero was not a human, however; it concerned the infamous case of the 400lb western lowland gorilla that had been named Harambe, which was shot dead at the Cincinnati zoo after a toddler entered his enclosure and interacted with the animal.
In a lengthy post on Wednesday evening, what would have been the primate’s 27th birthday, the official government account mourned “an icon that became part of internet history, American culture, and an entire generation’s timeline”.
Security staff at the zoo shot and killed the male silverback on 28 May 2016 after the boy, three-year-old Isaiah Dickerson, climbed a fence, crawled through a hedge, and dropped 15ft into the enclosure holding Harambe and fellow gorillas. Video captured the gorilla pulling the boy, who received only minor injuries, through water.
The incident became a viral internet sensation, prompting memes, tributes both fake and real, music and poetry, and calls for sports teams to be renamed for Harambe. It also sparked safety improvements at the zoo, which reopened its gorilla enclosure a year later with higher walls and other barriers.
Wednesday’s bizarre 123-word memorial post to the animal by the White House, which remained silent when the former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney died in November, evoked that aftermath.
“He became a symbol of loyalty, strength, chaos, unity, and the strange beauty of the internet bringing millions of people together for one cause: never forgetting Harambe,” it said.
“Everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news. And somehow, a decade later, his legacy still lives on. Gone, but never forgotten. Rest easy to a true patriot.”
Harambe was born in captivity at a zoo in Brownsville, Texas, in May 1999.
Soon after the 2016 incident, Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, spoke of how it was “so beautiful to watch” Harambe with the child.
“It was almost like a mother holding a baby … looked so beautiful and calm, and there were moments where [it] looked pretty dangerous,” he told reporters at a press conference, adding that he would not criticize zoo staff for opening fire.
“I don’t think they had a choice,” he said. “You have a child, a young child is at stake, and you know it’s too bad there wasn’t another way.”
