I just pulled Friday, Nov 1rst off of my page-a-day “The Onion” calendar. It had a picture of Steve with the caption, “Crocodile Hunter The Same Way In Bed”.
Worse than death? And actually, he didn’t pay the price of playing with crocodiles, he was in a freak accident. Completely unrelated.
This article says the coroner in Australia has been given a video of the accident.
I really, really hope it doesn’t end up on line, but I expect it will.
Very True. Now if he had been eaten by a crocidile, then everyone on here would say , “Well Duh!” but he wasn’t. Now that more information has been released on the incident, I feel alot more sympathetic to his situation.
He didn’t die screwing around with stuff he shouldn’t have. He died swiming above what is normally a harmless animal.
I wouldn’t say harmless. Stingrays can deliver a nasty and very painful jab (hence the name), so it’s best not to threaten them, but only very, very, very rarely are they fatal.
You know, for Steve Irwin there could never be too many motherfking snakes on any mother fking plane
mm
Maybe, though I’m still not convinced he wasn’t messing with the ray when it hit him, so while this wasn’t crocodile related, I think it was related to his habit of handling dangerous animals in the wild.
Freak accident? The barb did exactly what it was supposed to do, eliminate a threat. Wasn’t an freak accident at all, and depending on what Irwin was doing (trying to ride it maybe?) it might not even have been bad luck, but simply a predictable response to stimulus.
Have you read any of the articles we’ve linked to in this thread? So far, everything says he just happened to swim over the thing and get stung. As noted, dying by stingray at all is highly unusual. If he wasn’t provoking it, “freak accident” fits.
Whatever the debate, Steve always assumed blame for whatever happened to him. He never put the blame on the animal, he just said it was doing what comes naturally. I’m sure Terri puts no blame on the stingray, either. Irwin was an adventurer, he was more hands-on than other naturalists, but he always knew the risks. It doesn’t make his death any less tragic, but he would have said, “Oh, absolutely. It was me own damn fault.” He would have harbored no hostility for the critter.
Yes, I’ve read them and they are sorta misleading on that point. It had to have been provoked in order to have stung him. Stingrays don’t spontaneously sting things.
This is Stingray City in Grand Cayman in the Caribbean. Divers are invited to play and interact with stingrays. There are several sites like this in the Caribbean.
http://cruises.about.com/cs/caribbeanports/a/stingray_photos.htm
Yeah, but its pretty bizarre that one of the 17 total recorded deaths by stingray happen to be from a guy famous for messing with dangerous animals. It might be coincidence, but I think its more likely that he was grabing at the ray, it freaked and stuck him in the chest.
I don’t have any problem with Irwin’s bit, I don’t think he does any lasting harm to the animals and he seems to appriciate the risks involved. But I’m still skeptical that this was a freak attack that could’ve happened to anyone and just happened to hit Irwin.
Most of the reports I’ve heard have been from witnesses that were friends and co-workers of Irwin, I’ll be interested to see what more impartial sources (i.e., the corner) makes of the video.
Christ, I’m almost hoping the video will make its way online, so we can all see what happened with our own eyes, and put an end to this silly debate. :rolleyes:
Obviously the animal was provoked. What we were talking about is whether he did anything to deliberately provoke it, or if he was just unlucky and swam over it without realizing what would happen.
The thing is that you’re assuming the conclusion. (So is Operation Ripper.) It’s true that his friends aren’t objective parties here, but that doesn’t mean they’re lying. We have hearsay, but that’s still more than the “he was trying to ride the ray” theory has.
Here’s a more objective account, via the AP:
People will keep saying what they want to, I guess, but if this guy is right, it sounds to me that reality splits the difference: he knew the animal was there - in retrospect I guess that much was obvious; he had a cameraman out there with him - but didn’t do anything reckless.
Bet this is going to be bad for their business.
Something made me stop and think of Steve Irvin the other day.
I was walking down the street and I realized I was wearing a pair of Lee Dungarees. Wear your Lee Dungarees in memory of Steve Irwin.
Is just swimming over a ray provoking it? I’ve swam over lots of rays and never gotten stung (most people, so far as I know, get stung when they step on the things, or when they’re trying to get them off fishhooks), as no doubt have many millions of other beach vacationers. Of course Irwin might have just been unlucky enough to hit that one in a million ray with an axe to grind, but from what we know of the man I’d say the idea that he was petting/grabbing/biting it seems at least equally likely.
Not saying that his friends are lying, so much as I expect they would omit saying if Steve was trying to “ride the ray” or whatever. Not really a lie so much as making thier deceased friend look a little less cupable in his own death through omission, a fairly common reaction I’d imagine.
And I don’t mean he was provoking the ray by riding it, I imagine most wild animals find any sort of human contact threatening.
I imagine “interacting” involves some sort of contact, which why we may not find provoking, this ray certainly did.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it increased their business.