Farewell, Steve -- we hardly knew ye.
What we learned from the Crocodile Hunter, both in life and in death.
By Jeff Emanuel Posted in Culture | Featured Stories — Comments (16) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
As is now known to virtually every soul on the globe, famed "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was killed yesterday afternoon in a "freak sting ray accident" while filming a documentary on dangerous marine life at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. He was 44.
Having made the snap decision to interrupt his normal filming schedule to take advantage of a large school of rays unexpectedly swimming in the area, Irwin was snorkeling above an eight-foot bull ray when the animal, apparently spooked, swung its tail upward in a defensive move. A mere two feet from the creature, Irwin never had a chance to move out of the way, and the ray's highly poisonous 8-inch barb struck him in the heart. Pulling the barb out of his chest was his last action before losing consciousness, going into cardiac arrest, and passing away.
Irwin's wife, Terri, wasn't notified about his death until well after the rest of the world already knew the sad news, due to the fact that she was trekking in Tasmania at the time. She will now be left alone to raise the couple's two children, Bindi (8) and Bob (2).
Australian Prime Minister John Howard described Irwin's death as a "huge loss to Australia" and actor Russell Crowe said Irwin was "the Australian that we all aspire to be." I cannot disagree with either of them.
Read on...
Known for his risk-taking and daredevil antics around some of the world's deadliest creatures, Irwin brought us all closer to wildlife, and made passing on the messages of nature and conservation a fun, interactive, and often adrenaline-filled pursuit. An environmentalist who loved his work and preached a heartfelt respect for nature, Irwin taught his audiences more about animals through his hands-on teaching approach than many of us ever would have learned, or have paid attention to, had it come in a less action-packed, daredevil-ish package.
While many watched his show with the same morbid fascination with which they would view auto racing or ultimate fighting -- namely, watching because of the chance of seeing spectacular crashes or horrible injuries -- we viewers always came away not only with our money's worth of thrills, but also with an education which we likely would not have received anywhere else.
The Crocodile Hunter television show, and the educationally voyeuristic experiences it provided, will be something that I will never forget.
The first time I remember seeing the show, which aired for several years on the Animal Planet channel, I was a teenager. The episode was his special on the ten deadliest snakes in Australia. To my amazement, he was capturing one of each, on camera, with his bare hands -- often by inducing the snake to strike and, with dazzling quickness and agility, seemingly rematerializing from within the snake's "kill zone" to a safe place behind the reptile, from where he deftly grabbed each snake and placed it into a bag for transport.
Nothing I saw from him after that was ever any less amazing. He would often bring film crews along on "rescue missions," when a crocodile, posionous snake, or other animal had strayed hopelessly far from its proper habitat (and often was threatening people), and then dazzle both the live crowd and later televison audiences by putting his body on the line to catch the oft-deadly creature by hand, and relocate it.
His advertising appearances were no less entertaining, from his Toyota commercials (where he wrestled blow-up crocodiles) to his ESPN ad, in which he took down the Florida Gators' mascot, while uttering both of his taglines ("Crikey!" and "Isn't she gorgeous!").
Even Irwin's death itself reinforced his life's mission, as with it he has taught us another invaluable lesson about the deadliness of animal life not properly, and precautionarily, respected -- as well as just how quickly the consequences of such action can be felt.
While many expected a spectacular end to the man who gambled his life every day, the death of possibly the world's number one on-camera risk taker was fairly anticlimactic. From The Australian:
"The footage shows him swimming in the water, the ray stopped and turned and that was it," said boatowner Peter West, who viewed the footage afterwards.
"There was no blood in the water, it was not that obvious ... something happened with this animal that made it rear and he was at the wrong position at the wrong time and if it hit him anywhere else we would not be talking about a fatality."
In the end, the man who appeared to cheat death every day of his career finally ran out of lives. He died doing what he loved more than anything in the world: teaching us all about the beauty, wonder, and inherent danger of the animal world. Whether it is the way that he would have wanted to go, only he could say; however, it seems strangely fitting, though not at this age, nor with such a young family to leave behind.
In his own eccentric, risky, and larger-than-life way, Steve Irwin captured the imagination of, and touched, the world. He grabbed life by the horns and, day in and day out, lived it to the fullest. For his sake, the sake of his family, and the sake of all that he sought to accomplish in his all-too-brief life, I hope -- and strongly suspect -- that neither he, nor the lessons he taught us all, will be forgotten any time soon.
Rest in Peace, "Crocodile Hunter." We knew you for all too brief a time -- but wouldn't trade a minute of it for the world.
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Farewell, Steve -- we hardly knew ye. 16 Comments (0 topical, 16 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Yeah, he lived on the edge. And he knew the risks.
He was willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of realism.
I'm sure that's a small consolation to his wife and small children.
Animal Planet.
Having many people who were touched by the man, all out there wishing you well, and sharing memories of the one you lost, has to be worth something.
--
If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
From:
CNN: LARRY KING LIVE, Interview With Steve Irwin, Aired November 25, 2004
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0411/25/lkl.01.html
excerpt:
KING: Have you been injured by animals?
IRWIN: Have I ever. Both fingers, this is as good as this one gets. It got snapped off. I'd been catching crocodiles in North Queensland putting satellite trackers. It got snapped off behind the knuckle. That's as good as it gets. I wanted to cut it off but my daughter said oh please daddy. I said, no it would be great Bindy. We'll have a little pet daddy finger. She's like no, dad. Anyway, this one's broke behind the knuckle there. Two broken ribs. My knee is bone on bone keeps chipping away. I've got ...
KING: Your closest call was with a venomous snake right? That was your closest.
IRWIN: In my childhood, closest. That was it, yes.
KING: You were bitten?
IRWIN: No I wasn't. I've never been bitten by a venomous snake.
KING: So what happened with this snake?
IRWIN: It was just there, poised and dad knocked me out of the way, but he couldn't work out how come the snake never bit me. The closest - I've got bites all over me, I really have, from everything, from non-venomous snakes to big cats to of course a lot of croc bites, but nothing serious. I'm a professional. I guess it's like a helicopter pilot. You want to jump in with the helicopter pilot. You don't want the pilot going, you're going to jump in mate. I've had 27 crashes. You go, I don't think I want to fly with this guy. The same with me. You don't want to...
KING: Have you been frightened?
IRWIN: I have.
KING: A lot (ph).
IRWIN: I've had a couple of really big [scares], mate.
KING: What was the biggest?
IRWIN: The biggest scare of my life was with my best friend, Wes (ph). Myself and Wes, we grew up together. My dad was our dad, even though he had another father and mother. They're great beautiful people, but he was a reptile freak and together we grew up at the Australia Zoo and our conservation heart (ph). So we had a flood of biblical proportions at the zoo. Liam, Wes, we're like brothers, we went in, the debris was building on the fence and we didn't want the fence to collapse and it was with Graham and Bindy. Now Graham's a particularly gnarly croc. He's bitten me in the hand once before. Bindy is my daughter's namesake. She's a very feisty female croc.
She had a nest. We went in there. Graham snuck up on Wes, grabbed him right on the bottom and just started killing him right in front of me, tore two pieces of meat the size of my fist right out of his bottom, right out of here which was kind of lucky, because if it had hit bone, when crocs bite, it hits bone mate, the bones explodes. It just pop, it just blows up and he probably would have died if it had hit him in the hips. So I jumped on the croc. I twisted its back leg. He spat Wes out. I gave the croc a stick to eat rather than myself and we both got away. Mate, that scared no the point where I was kind of nervous going back in and Wes spent three weeks in hospital. They stitched him. They put these steel staples in and pulled the meat together. He had holes this big, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and they pulled it together. And in three weeks he got out of the hospital. Graham the crocodile, he hasn't fully recovered and we nearly lost him with food poisoning.
KING: You love the crocs, right?
IRWIN: Love them, mate, love them, love them, love them.
Here's my take, over on ShopFloor.org: http://blog.nam.org/archives/2006/09/steve_irwin_rip.php
It is fitting that he left us on Labor Day, as his work ethic and enthusiasm for his work were enviable.
He advanced herping and animal conservation greatly. He educated millions. He lived his faith. He married the love of his life and was blessed with two beautiful children. He died in action, doing what he loved and suffered little if any. I admired the way he mixed his tremendous professionalism and showman ability to the benefit of the story and message he was telling. For all of us blessed/cursed with the herping hobby/obsession, he will always be considered one of the truly great ones.
I'll miss him mostly for the hours and hours of joy that he provided by young sons. They adored his shows and movies and love to try to speak like him.
I'll miss him a lot. He seemed like a very free-spirited man who loved his life, his family, and loved his work and was completely happy with what he was doing -- that's an enviable life in any book. And by most accounts I've seen or read, what you saw on television or in person was what you got and who he was, and that's a rare thing these days. And he left behind a great legacy, touched and educated and entertained millions of people along the way. It's a rare person who combines an almost childlike enthusiasm, sense of awe and taste for adventure with the ability to be a true conservationist and a professional, as well as a showman and a good businessman. Nobody in Australia should ever be embarrassed by his example or persona. The world needs more people like him, and I'm sad he's gone.
I am a hawkish warmonger with a crusty demeanour and a heart of steel. But I have a softer side.
My kids are SO bummed. Especially my youngest two. They could watch him for hours on end. And, my son runs around saying "Crikey!" anytime he is "hunting" some critter.
It's a sad day for all animal lovers.
Crocs Rock!
RIP Crocodile Hunter
Sad Day :(
Such a wonderfully nice man. It always sad to see someone die still with so much life left and with young kids.
Irwin was supporter of President Bush and his foreign policy goals (I heard him interviewed once on a conservative radio talkshow).
It's a sad day, my prayers are with his wife and children. Steve Irwin's legacy is a large one. One of the things I admired about the guy was his enthusiasm - you couldn't help but like the guy. He never worked a day in his life, how could you call it 'work' when he loved it so much. Hopefully his message will live on - whether or not he thought the government should be in the business of conservation, he always told everyone that they were responsible for wildlife conservation.
I think its highly ironic that Steve Irwin died late on the same day that Adam Gadahn made his appearance on TV encouraging all of us to converty to Islam or suffer the consequences in the manner of the Prophet Mohammed. Tie those two very separate events in with Winston Churchill's famous statement "Woe to the man who keeps feeding the crocodile in the hope that it eats him last!"
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/4/162734/2668
The kossacks show their usual amount of class on this one as well.
Only so many people can turn a tragic death into a 100 post Bush-bash session.
"Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand with our President. We're Americans, and we'll never surrender."
-Senator John McCain
Steve is the one on the upper right in the photo.
At least he didn't slip and fall in the shower
I believe it would be hard to understand Steve's reasoning and sense of adventure that persisted throughout his entire career as the Crocodile Hunter if I myself had not experienced nature's power and beauty in my own life.
While many of my peers as a youth thought I was crazy for rock-climbing, white-water rafting, mountain biking, and canoeing in areas hundreds of miles from civilization...I found acceptance through common interest in watching Steve participate in equally (although definitely riskier) adventurous quests in the great outdoors. He demonstrated that it was OK to venture where no man had ventured before, and that it is important to always carry with oneself a profound respect for the awesome and scary power of nature and its inhabitants while doing so.
I am sure that I am just one of many to have found inspiration and a common interest in the outdoors from Steve Irwin, but I also know that his legend as the Crocodile Hunter will continue inspiring outdoor-lovers for generations to come.