Okay, you
giraffe you, you had me going. I thought
you were going to give birth three weeks ago because the experts told me that “while
they couldn’t predict” the time, you would be going in to labor. No doubt.
I feel a little
duped. I talked this over with a few
people over the last few days and some also feel duped, and some not so
much. I mean, she is a pregnant giraffe,
and she will give birth, but why the rush to view? It’s right here that the
question hangs heavy.
To raise
awareness? To raise money? I’m a cynic in so many ways and to raise money hit
me like a ton of bricks after the first night, when the camera feed
mysteriously went down based on claims of inappropriate content for a matter of
hours and reappeared “at the request of so many” of the viewers with a “donate
now” button added. Maybe like some of
you, I became immediately suspect. “That
giraffe ain’t close to birthing no baby” was my initial thought, and told my
husband there was something up and it wasn’t daisies.
Followed by
sanctioned and licensed t-shirts, emoji apps, disclaimers and email
flooding. I became a bit angry, a little
disappointed and a lot embarrassed that I watched that dang video for a couple
hours the first night, and came THIS close to getting wrapped up in the
hype. I stopped watching and did a
check-in every other day or so for the next week, did not watch at all week two
and now, into week three, heading in to week four, I really don’t care so much.
I mean, I love giraffes, but, I don’t
need to see it, you know? No baby, but
gee, here’s the cute zoo keeper with his daily check-in. I was near outraged at his “Hey, people,
there’s no predicting when this might happen but in the meantime, here is
another way you can contribute”. Now, to
his credit, and he did claim to be totally transparent, it’s a for profit
facility. While he was hawking goods for
the giraffe for the zoo he was also correcting information and educating us on n’ere-do-wells
making a profit from unlicensed products.
He didn’t want us to be duped, after all, but make no mistake, the zoo
operates to make money.
So, as we head
in to week four, we now know that there were no signs on that first night (or
the next twenty nights) that the giraffe was about to give birth – in fact, no
signs at all, except what was shared with us about how big she is. Well, yeah, she’s a giraffe, she’s HUGE
generally. The fact there are now features
added to the live feed, such as the donate button or the opportunity to link to
their store to purchase a licensed t-shirt, a REAL t-shirt mind you, or a
coffee mug is certainly not a crime.
I was miffed, I
really was, for a hot second. I didn’t
like, as I never like, feeling manipulated.
When I tune in, and I admit, I do…there’s part of me that wants to see
that baby giraffe poke it’s feet out…I watch without comments or goofy emoji
faces floating by me which usually means going right to the zoo’s camera
feed. But, the other night I landed on
the Facebook page instead, on one of the TV channels camera feed and got a bit
caught up reading a couple of the comments.
A story from a nurse, working midnights, with a patient having trouble
getting to sleep and how the giraffe story eased her anxiety. The story of the man taking care of his dying
mother, and how the giraffe gave them something to talk about, to distract his
breaking heart. The young mom, home from
work with a sick baby…
I forgive you,
zoo, for manipulating the facts a little bit, and for not being as transparent
in the beginning as you should have been.
You knew that giraffe wasn’t ready to give birth…the whole ‘waxy nipple”
alone tells us she wasn’t ready yet. However, people want to purchase t-shirts
or pay for an emoji app or to donate directly because the story has brought us joy,
distraction, commonality, but, most of all hope, for a brighter day.
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