If you haven't heard, I'm sorry to be the first to tell you that Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter," has died. When I first read the news on the Telecaster forum I thought, "Really? I didn't know he was sick." Then I remembered this was the Crocodile Hunter we were talking about and my thought changed to, "Oh. So what kind of animal finally got him?"

According to a guy who was on the boat with him who was interviewed by CNN, Irwin was filming a series of shows for Animal Planet called The Deep's Deadliset Creatures. The weather had been too bad to film so the Crocodile Hunter decided to instead do some "soft stories" for a kid's show he was also taping. An unseen stingray was buried in the sand, and a barb on it's tail stabbed Steve Irwin in the chest and injected him with venom. He was probably dead before half an hour passed because they had difficulty getting from this remote area to a place where a helicopter could land.

Some quick info on stingrays: according to the 1981 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia, stingrays off the Australian coast can grow to 14 feet in length (!). Stingrays have a burr on the middle of their tails like a serrated knife. If they feel thratened they whip their tail over their head to stab the attacker with the burr. A marine biologist from the Georgia Aquarium, speaking to CNN, said the burr on a stingray like Steve Irwin was dealing with could have been 12" long. So it's like the Crocodile Hunter was stabbed with a 12", serrated knife dipped in poison.

The Crocodile Hunter phenomenon had already been in swing for about a year before I got into it, but I recall cheerfully sitting through a couple of Crocodile Hunter marathons once I got hooked (pardon the unintentional pun). Like a former co-worker said, "All you can say is, 'He is a man.' The animals don't attack because they know he's not afraid."

Steve Irwin was 44 and had a wife and two little kids. There is validity in the argument that anyone with a family like that should have stopped swinging rattlesnakes by their tail a few years ago. Given the kind of stunts we've seen him pull it's just amazing this didn't happen years ago. Really, the subtext of the ending of every The Crocodile Hunter show was, "Look! I'm still alive!"

I just hope in the split second he had to realize what happened that he felt content that he died doing what he loved.

2 Comments:

 Mr. Radio said...

Steve Irwin was a real character, and by all accounts a good family man who talked the talk and had the balls to walk the walk.

And he had balls. Big, round, hairy ones. I admit that on more than one occasion I have thought he was as crazy as a shithouse mouse. But he did what he did for the good of the world because that was what he believed he was put here for.

I'm watching Animal Planet right now, and of course they're running a tribute. They just showed Stever say, "Conservation is my life, my passion, my whole persona."

May his wife and little girl and boy carry on his good works.

7:02 PM, September 04, 2006  

 Admin Worm said...

He was insane, yes, but doing the Lord's work.

I didn't see a lot of his stuff but what I did see I enjoyed very much.

Not many people get the opportunity to do what they love...and to become wealthy and famous at it, too.

Too bad for his family, but hey...people die at work every day. Yes, his job was a little more dangerous than being a cashier at a grocery store, but he'd have been miserable if he'd have done that.

9:49 PM, September 04, 2006  

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