It seemed like a two-day story at most last May when Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla, was shot and killed by a Cincinnati Zoo worker who was trying to save a small child who had fallen into its enclosure.

But here we are through spring and summer and well into fall, and the dead gorilla continues to make news. Two weeks ago, Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals showed off a baseball bat that memorialized Harambe.

Today, many in our culture value the lives of animals over humans.

And last week, the Trenton Golden Hawks, a team in the highly competitive Ontario Junior Hockey League in Canada, celebrated Wildlife Week by sporting special commemorative jerseys to honor Harambe.

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The NFL banned “Harambe” from NFL uniforms. And a Public Policy Polling survey in July found he would do well running as an independent for president. He drew 5 percent of the vote — enough to defeat Green Party candidate Jill Stein and almost enough to overcome Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. Ugly Harambe Christmas sweaters have popped up.

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It’s all harmless enough — a baseball player gets ‘Harambe’ emblazoned on his bat, a hockey team honors the gorilla on its jerseys, the ape out-polls an actual candidate for president.

But it does mark a dark moment for the country — an attempt to make light in an unsettling way of what truly was an unfortunate accident that received over-the-top outrage.

Vigils were created in memory of the gorilla. Petitions were enacted to take on the mother for letting her child get into this situation and the zoo for what they consider its rash decision to kill what they see as a relatively harmless animal. The zookeepers were called murderers, and PETA called for a boycott of what is one of America’s outstanding zoos.

The fact remains the gorilla was not some huggable creature looking for friendship with the little boy. It was violently dragging the boy around the enclosure.

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“He was acting erratically, he was disoriented,” Thane Maynard, director of the Cincinnati Zoo, said at the time. “[The boy’s] head was banging on concrete. This was not a gentle thing. The child was at risk.”

Not so long ago, that would have ended the discussion. But today, many in our culture value the lives of animals over humans. The Disneyfication of animals has left us with the silly presumption they feel and think like we do and that this animal had some logical rationale to his actions. In first-world suburbia, we get little exposure to the realities of the wild — and when we do, we find it shocking.

Yes, Harambe will be one of this Halloween’s most popular costumes. It’s a cute and clever take on a sad and serious incident. But let’s remember it’s possible to feel sorry for the gorilla without lashing out at the people who had to make a tough decision, with little opportunity for reflection.

If the zoo hadn’t acted as it did, and the gorilla had not been stopped, nobody would be wearing Harambe costumes this year, and one family would have only just begun to mourn its loss.