Tasteless Harambe Tributes Are Bananas, Apparently Come In Bunches

The Cincinnati Zoo’s recent gripes about all the Harambe memes,  petitions and signs  don’t seem to be having much of an effect.

Case in point: Two high school football games each featured re-enactments of the tragedy at a high school football games this past weekend.

During a Saturday game between Harrison High School and East Central High School, two Cincinnati area schools, a person in a gorilla costume “entertained” the crowd by grabbing someone dressed as a small child and dragging him down the field, according to Cincinnati.com.

Meanwhile, on Friday at a game between Chicago-area schools Oswego East High School and Joliet West, another person dressed in a gorilla suit chased down a person in a banana costume who was holding a sign that read “R.I.P. Harambe” to a rapturous crowd, as this video tweet shows. 

The Huffington Post reached out to West Joliet High School, where the incident happened, to see if the Harambe act was sanctioned by the school or just a prank, but has not heard back.

These are just the latest satirical commentaries on Harambe that has popped up since May, when the gorilla was killed by zoo officials after a boy fell into his pen and he began to drag the child around by the ankle.

The range of memes includes things ranging from “Saving Private Ryan ” to Michael Phelps to Pokémon Go .

Sadly, some Harambe memes have been highly offensive, including one version used as a racist attack against black celebrities .

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story conflated details from two spoofs in its report on the one that occurred in Illinois. It has been updated with details regarding the second event in Ohio.