…be careful of who is around when you talk about him.
We went to the zoo this week. There was this very bright little girl about my daughter’s age. (Future zoologist maybe.) She kept talking to me at different areas as we would happen upon each other. So at the crocodile house, I was going to talk to her about the episode of the Nile crocodile with the floating carcass of a hippo. From my experience, seven-year-olds think stuff like that is really cool.
Silly me, I started with asking her if she had ever watched the Crocodile Hunter. One person in her group was a woman from Australia, apparently from the same area as Steve Irwin. She went off! I have no idea what her objections to him were because my mind was busy trying to figure out how to get my kids from behind her and slowly back out the entrance of the building and also I had, “Just keep smiling, just keep smiling,” going on in my head. Finally she took her ranting outside. And I’m guessing from this encounter that I’m supposed to think that Steve Irwin is the weird one?
I find the croc hunter to be very entertaining and even more so is the recent commercial I saw where Steve is handling the deadly snake and is bitten. It goes something like this… He says “no worries” because they have had some courier company deliver the antivenom. His assistant comes into the shot and tells them they used the other company and the antivenom isn’t available. Steve says “By crikey” and keels over.
I tried to find it at adcritic.com but it wasn’t there so I offer this public service announcement in it’s place…
“Don’t worry, 'cause we’re having the antivenin delivered by FedEx, ‘cause in my line o’ work, if you’re not absolutely sure, you’re absolutely dead.”
::man walks up and whispers in his ear::
“Crikey! Seems we’ve used a different courier, and it isn’t here yet. But that’s okay becau—”
As for why she went off, she possibly is one of those ‘we need to save you from yourself’ minded people. You know, firecrackers are dangerous, so lets ban everything including sparklers (They can cause a fire after all), or Chainsaws need warnings about everything, including ones about stopping the chain with your fingers. Steve irritates people like that because they think kids will try doing everything he does, just like they jump off bridges just like their favorite action movie heroes do.
All I know is that her actions were the ones I don’t want my children imitating!
Ok, so occasionally I’ll say something like, “Now you girls know that you shouldn’t jump out of a moving vehicle even if you do happen to see a rare, endangered goana (Spelling? ya know, lizard) on the side of the road, right?” But gee whiz, Terri is constantly saying, “Steve and I are trained professionals. You should never pick up…touch…play with…(fill in animal here).”
As an Aussie I have to say I find him ridiculously annoying! He’s not well know down under but his annoying adherence to stereotypes and antiquated Oz colloquialisms haunted my during my trip to the US.
I’d lvoe to see him get bitten by a goanna. Or anything actually…
dpr, I think he is VERY well known down under. Have you got kids? My 7 yo thinks Steve is God and is nagging to go to the Australia Zoo at the earliest possible opportunity. I am hoping that some time next century will suit.
My SO did a truly dumb thing this morning and I am still steaming. He picked up a snake off the road on the grounds it was so beautiful he wanted to give it a decent burial. He’s still bewildered as to why I went postal at him. Well WTF would he have done if the snake was just stunned and woke up and bit him? He wouldn’t know a carpet snake from a King Brown or a taipan.
