The elephant stared balefully down, its eye as big as my head.

“Well, this is terrifying!” I said.

“It’s fine,” said the zookeeper. “Why are you frightened?”

“I thought it would be smaller,” I said.

“It’s an elephant,” he replied.

“Are you sure?” I said. “It’s the size of a stegosaurus.”

“These are the most docile elephants in the world,” said the keeper. “This is London Zoo. They see crowds of people every day. They’ve had their photo taken with the Queen. There is nothing to be worried about.”

“Fine,” I said, picking up the shovel. That dung wasn’t going to clear itself. We swept the enclosure as the elephant looked on.

Area cleared, I edged over to the giant creature. With a trembling hand, I patted its vast, wrinkled neck. Returning the favour, the elephant prodded me all over with its trunk. I felt oddly flattered.

The keeper smiled and nodded encouragement as I nestled close enough to give the elephant a proper cuddle. “Totally fine!” he mouthed.

The following year, it trampled him to death.

There are no elephants at London Zoo any more. The ones I met were moved, I think, to Whipsnade. I remember seeing a sign saying: “The elephants have moved away” and hoping it wasn’t a euphemism.

I have a complicated relationship with the zoo; maybe everyone does. It’s so wonderful and so sad. The recent story of the gorilla that was shot dead at Cincinnati Zoo, after a child fell into the enclosure, has shocked and rattled everyone I know. The widespread horror comes, I think, because we all feel culpable.

Why was there relatively so little coverage of last week’s court case, in which South Lakes Safari Zoo in Cumbria was fined £297,500 for its culpability in the death of a keeper who was fatally mauled by a tiger? Everyone talked about the instance where the human survived and the animal died, but not the other way around.

It must be because we don’t feel responsible for the human’s death, but we do for the animal’s.

I grew up near London Zoo, with which I was obsessed. I would lie in bed at night, thinking about the lions and tigers and wolves that were prowling only a few miles away. (I assumed they were prowling. God knows, when we visited in the daytime, they were always asleep.)

It wasn’t a frightening thought; it was a wondrous thought. What a strange, magical, Victorian idea: a marvellous menagerie in the park! I knew that in the 19th century the zoo had housed a quagga: a sort of weird zebra, now extinct. I yearned to see one. I dreamed of growing up and becoming a zookeeper.

Sure enough, I did grow up and become a zookeeper, albeit only for a day. I was sent in by the Radio Times, to promote a documentary.

I remember my idyllic happiness, that morning, as I prepared the ant-eaters’ breakfast. What do you think an anteater has for breakfast? That’s right: porridge. A porridge of fruit, vegetables, honey and mince. The dish was so sophisticated, I was tempted to pop it on a tray with a napkin and a copy of the Daily Telegraph.

I fed locusts to tamarin monkeys and chopped apples for naked mole-rats. The reason I went to the elephants’ enclosure was to collect dung for the dung beetles.

I remember, at the end of the day, not wanting to put my trousers in the washing machine because they still bore the muddy imprint of the elephant’s inquisitive trunk – like a groupie not wanting to wash her face after a kiss from Mick Jagger.

The memories were ruined, of course, by that keeper’s awful death the following year. But “ruined” is not the right word, because awfulness needs to be part of the picture. Keepers die in zoos quite a lot. Only a few months after Jim died, a keeper was fatally crushed at Chester Zoo by an elephant that had been volatile following a foot injury and was put down immediately after the incident.

There is never much public conversation after a keeper dies. I imagine people think: “Occupational hazard. Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

This may be harsh but we all, even those who love visiting a zoo, feel guilty about their existence. Whatever they do to promote conservation – and I don’t know about Cincinnati, but London Zoo does an enormous amount – we know those animals don’t want to be in cages. We feel the frustration of the big cats, the terrible sadness of our cousins the gorillas.

What deal did we, humanity, make with Harambe from Cincinnati Zoo? He was bred in captivity. He never knew freedom. We stared at him every day of his life. Our fascination incarcerated him in a place where there was a risk that one of our own species might fall in; when that happened, we killed him.

Witnessing that death, we’re like the audience of Twelfth Night who laugh at the gulling of Malvolio: we have to take responsibility for the horror because we’ve all enjoyed the fun bit. We all understand the thrill of seeing these beautiful creatures in the flesh. Perhaps the reason we don’t mourn keepers is that keepers represent us, culpable humanity: their deaths can feel like a balancing sacrifice. Not so the gorilla, which had already given enough.

London Zoo is amazing. I want to take my child there, so that she can feel the awe and wonder I felt (and feel) myself. I don’t want zoos to stop. But, if they’re going to continue, perhaps every zoo should have a statue of Harambe the gorilla, right in the middle of everything, to remind us of the central wrong that can never be put right.