Monday, September 04, 2006

Sorry, Who Didn't See This Coming?

Steve Irwin AKA The Crocodile Hunter, was killed by a stingray while filming in Australia.
Listen, death is never funny, and he had a family so this is obviously upsetting for them, but have you ever seen this guy? One of the first times I saw Crocodile Hunter he was wrestling a 13ft croc, and I thought, well, in the realm of ideas this falls under not so great.
Did anyone ever see that picture when he brought his newborn child into a croc pit at one of his zoos? The press gave Michael Jackson a hard time for holding Blanket over a balcony but when Crocodile Hunter puts a baby near a deadly creature everyone laughs. Oh, he's fearless! Or maybe people, he's crazy.
He did a lot for wildlife and zoos, but I believe he was also the reason for shows like "Jackass" so that might negate any good he did for nature. Not to knock a brother when he's down but honestly, if a man were paid large sums of money to stick forks in electrical sockets and then one day died as a result, you might be inclined to shrug your shoulders and say, "well, yea."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sad news this morning with the passing of pet pesterer the Aussie Croc Botherer. Never saw his programmes but most of the time I understand he was doing the equivalent of running a stick up and down the bars of a cage to aggravate the inhabitant. Okay, so he was doing it in the wild, there was no cage and the animal in question was normally a snake, but the principal is the same.

I have a pact with animals. I don’t annoy them and they taste good. What worries me about people prodding lizards and so on for entertainment is that it’s not really entertaining. Animals interact with animals, not people. If you prod a lizard of COURSE it’s going to get annoyed.

So hearing that he’d been impaled by a stingray was, while of course a tragedy and blah blah blah also, in some way, a clear case of messing with the bull and getting the horns. Or rather getting killed by a really big fish.

Jess said...

you're incredibly hilarious.

your pact with animals should be made into t-shirts and sold at zoos or pet stores in lieu of the "please don't tap on glass" signs.

Anonymous said...

All I have to say is..."A stingray?!!" What a crappy animal to be killed by. Might as well have been death by chinchilla. At least that's fun to say.

I wonder what this PR will do for the stingray exhibit in sea world though - probably wonders. Has anyone SEEN that exhibit? It's a small, shallow pool with a few drugged up sting rays floating around. Definitely an afterthought. This idea is confirmed by the fact that it's in the ladies' bathroom.

Jess said...

Seaworld is the worst. I do remember the stingray exhibit being uber lame. Stingray! Come on, the name alone screams for a light show.
I think Death By Stingray should be the name of an a cappella group. People all amped up to rock only to get 12 guys singing "In the jungle"
Actually, I think you'd really go for that bri. ha.