Animals

Tragic news about The Crocodile Hunter television naturalist from Queensland, Australia. Steve Irwin was just killed by a stingray barb that went into his chest and stopped his heart.

Ow. Which is why I enjoy watching stingrays at the Long Beach Aquarium and expect never to swim with them.

The poor guy was 44 years old, doing a documentary. Left behind a wife and two kids. According to the local news version, he had used his international fame (like all over Animal Planet, the Flash video where he intros the page now eerie, morbid) to help the government and animals as well:

Steve Irwin's activities went far beyond his universally-known roles as an international TV star and owner of Australia Zoo, north of Brisbane.

They includes assisting Australian Quarantine Inspection service with advertising campaigns warning travelers not to bring foreign matter into the country, and he was becoming a vocal critic of the slaughter of Australian wildlife.

The federal government recently dropped plans to allow crocodile safaris for wealthy tourists in the Northern Territory after Irwin intervened, taking Environment Minister Ian Campbell on a tour of croc infested Cape York.

At the time, Irwin told Australian TV program A Current Affair that: "Killing one of our beautiful animals in the name of trophy hunting will have a very negative impact on tourism, which scares the living daylights out of me."

He also took some seemingly deserved heat for holding his newborn baby while he fed a crocodile. Would you say maybe a little too cocky?

I have no idea what the guy was like to know personally, but it just seems sad news.

The means of his passing says so much about him, and something about fate. The son of naturalists (imagine their horror), he was quoted as saying:

"I think I've actually got animals so genetically inside me that there's no way I could actually be anything else.

"I think my path would have always gone back to or delivered me to wildlife. I think wildlife is just like a magnet, and it's something that I can't help."

Live by the sword...echoes of the Grizzly Man. Always testing that tripwire line between human beings and wild animals.

The sting to the heart. Said to be instantaneous, but of course that moment of pain. How long did it last? Every half-second an eternity...

This one's going down a legend.

Condolences to his family.