24 August, 2015 9:30
CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
To the untrained eye, the brown coloured stone wedged in the south corner of the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla enclave looked nothing more than a decoration by keepers. But as soon as Rod Harley saw it, late last week, he knew his life was about to change. Fossilised.
An instinct honed over 40 years of fossil hunting told him that this rock, which he recognised as a amber stone fossil carrying the petrified corpse of a mosquito, would lead him and his team very, very rich.
On May 28, 2016, a three-year-old boy trespassed in gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, where he was cradled and loved by Harambe (17).
Apparently ‘fearing for the boy’s life’ – a zoo worker shot and killed the critically endangered Western lowland gorilla – in what remains to this day very suspicious circumstances.
In a year that has seen so many iconic and universally loved household names taken from us, it seems the death of Harambe, which came just days after Muhammad Ali, has definitely hit home the hardest.
“It was just that… He was so before his time,” says an emotional zookeeper from the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden.
“We didn’t want this to happen anymore than any of you did,”
“Feel like pure shit just want him back”
With thousands of suicide pacts arising throughout the world, notable Cincinnati Archaelogist Rod Harley knew what he had to do to restore order.
“I thought it was a long shot… But I knew there was a chance. I knew we could find some DNA of the late great,”
“As I arrived at the Zoo I could see that, three months on, these people had still not recovered. What I saw was pure chaos,”
“I saw a zookeeper shout ‘I’m coming Harambe!’ before diving into the alligator enclosure where he was torn to pieces,”
“It was mayhem,”
After sixteen hours non-stop fossicking, Mr Harley found what he was looking for, and what he knew was going to change the world.
“About 6 inches wide, 4 inches in height. A fossilised mosquito,” he said.
“I wasn’t certain, but I thought there is a 99% chance this thing still carries traces of Harambe”
Unfortunately for Harley, his level of scientific expertise ended there.
“I had to hand it on. But I didn’t know who to,”
As the archeologist pointed out, there was far too much evidence pointing to the allegations that current democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton had ordered the execution of Harambe. Too much to publicly announce his discovery anyway.
“I didn’t know who to trust. I just couldn’t be sure that Hilary had nothing to do with his death in the first place,”
“I needed to go underground. I went to the only place that I could trust. VICE News.”
Within days, VICE Media had organised a private auction of the fossil to philanthropic Harambe sympathisers from right across the world.
The final bid went to an anonymous Irish hospitality magnate, who has ensured both Harley and VICE Magazine that the folised remains will end up in the right hands, as modern science frantically rushes to find ways to bring Harambe back to life.
“Either they bring him back… or…”
“I’m coming to him” said the anonymous bidder.
