Steve Irwin R.I.P

It took me a while to decide whether to post this, because by now, everyone already knows.

Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, is dead.

I have to say, it’s sad, but not exactly unexpected. When your full time job is essentially pissing off large, dangerous creatures, it’s going to catch up with you sooner or later. The creatures only had to ‘get lucky’ once, Steve had to be lucky all the time.

It’s ironic that the creature that killed him wasn’t one of the more dangerous ones. The guy’s wrestled crocs, alligators and all messed with all kinds of poisonous spiders and snakes (The piece he did on spitting cobras is forever etched in my memory),

For those who don’t know yet, he was killed by a million to one chance encounter with a Stingray. Stingrays are poisonous, but their venom isn’t fatal. However, its stinger pierced his chest, got between his ribs and punctured his heart.

In other words, if the sting was a quarter-inch either way, he’d be alive and probably saying “Crikey! That was a close one!”

Basically, it’s like playing with lions and tigers every day, and finally getting killed by tripping over a kitten.

One thing I will say is that it’s incredibly easy to make fun of this. Like I said, it’s not exactly unexpected and it won’t be long before the late-night talk show hosts get hold of it. Everyone who watched him on TV called him crazy, and out and out goggled and some of the stuff he did.

However, please remember that Steve is leaving behind a wife and child, and that is never funny…under any circumstances.