RIP Steve Irwin
Last night at four in the morning our sixteen-year-old busted into our room to tell us that Steve Irwin had been killed by a stingray. We lay awake for quite a while, not getting back to sleep, thinking about it.
People die -- celebrities, heroes, geniuses, ordinary people -- and occasionally you're surprised to see just how much that person has meant to you. Steve Irwin got to do what boys everywhere dream of doing. His life had adventure, danger, he was in nature, playing with wild animals, he was fun and funny. He was on a mission to save and protect wildlife, and he brought us all closer to the world of living things that we seem so cut off from these days.
It is both appropriate and upsetting that he died doing what we all saw him do, what he loved, that he was killed by a dangerous wild animal. You think, well, how surprising was that? Duh, the guy holds poisonous snakes right up to his face so he can say, "Croikey, look at those fangs! This one's a killah for sure!" But it did. It totally took us all by surprise.
The kids have been watching the specials today on Animal Planet, but I can't stand to. What a cool guy.
People die -- celebrities, heroes, geniuses, ordinary people -- and occasionally you're surprised to see just how much that person has meant to you. Steve Irwin got to do what boys everywhere dream of doing. His life had adventure, danger, he was in nature, playing with wild animals, he was fun and funny. He was on a mission to save and protect wildlife, and he brought us all closer to the world of living things that we seem so cut off from these days.
It is both appropriate and upsetting that he died doing what we all saw him do, what he loved, that he was killed by a dangerous wild animal. You think, well, how surprising was that? Duh, the guy holds poisonous snakes right up to his face so he can say, "Croikey, look at those fangs! This one's a killah for sure!" But it did. It totally took us all by surprise.
The kids have been watching the specials today on Animal Planet, but I can't stand to. What a cool guy.
posted by JimK at 7:30 PM
2 Comments:
Crikey, mate. 'Tis a sad day, indeed. Steve Irwin was a good man and we'll all miss him.
Here's the lunatic fringe prespective on Irwin:
"'Crocodile Hunter' exploited animals, critic says
Updated: 8:26 a.m. ET Sept 6, 2006
SYDNEY, Australia -
Feminist academic Germaine Greer said on Wednesday she hoped the death of Australian “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin would mark the end of what she called exploitative nature documentaries, a discordant note amid floods of tributes.
Irwin died in a freak diving accident off Australia’s northeast coast on Monday after he was hit in the chest by the serrated barb from a stingray’s tail.
Echoing comments she made this week in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Australian-born Greer likened Irwin to a lion tamer and said he had intruded on the habitats of animals and treated them with “massive insensitivity"."
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