And on Steve Irwin

[sparkindarkness]

Since it seems to be a topic of the moment. kind of surprised me as I didn't think of him as being that prominent. Or do Australians feature largely on my friend's list, i wonder

I can't say i liked the guy. Enthusiasm at that level tends to irritate and tire me a great deal.

I do have a strange sense that the man was cheated though. A man who was that close to wildlife, a man who took such INCREDIBLY HUGE risks with some of the most lethal creatures on the planet (even more so than most people who live in Australia - the home of all things poisonous and deadly) fell to a sting ray - a creature that is relatively harmless? At least compared to everything else he faced.

Comments

[lalajia.livejournal.com]

You can just imagine how p*ssed off he must be in whatever afterlife one believes in!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

true, oh so true :)

[althaea101.livejournal.com]

I started watching him when he first started and love it and then he got to be too much. I continued love his passion for the wild though. I feel the same about him being cheated though.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

He was passionate, but his enthusiasm tended to annoy me becuase it was so OTT. i also wasn't fond of his methods - he interfered too much with the animals, he had to handle them. I generally prefer to see what they do naturally from a distance.

Still, we cannot fault his passion

[sapphybelle.livejournal.com]

As someone said on the Melbourne Gothic Forum, it's the equivalent of death by papercut.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

exactly!

[rampagingturtle.livejournal.com]

I think that what happened is that the sting ray got tired of of this hyperactive human swimming around and just wanted to flip him off when the cruel facts of stingray anatomy made themselves apparent. "Yeah yeah, I've got your 'crikey' right h- oops. My bad."

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

"go away, I'm swimmming here, damnit!"

[kitsuken.livejournal.com]

to be honest I doubt he would have died by anything that *was* dangerous. He knew too well how to handle them and, despite how reckless he seemed, usually made sure he didn't do anything that would end up with a fatal injury. The fact that it was something that usually isn't dangerous *and* is usually non-lethal is probably the only reason why it got him in the first place

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

he would have been more wary, but he was very blase apparently with the ray. Perhaps he has spent so long with dangerous creatures that he was less concerned by a supposedly harmless one

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

You get so many points for not using 'Crikey' in your subject line. If I see that word on a post one more time today, I am going to hurl.

Personally, I think the tosser got what he deserved, and the only people I feel sorry for are his kids and his long-suffering wife.

One correction - "a creature that is relatively harmless" - no such thing in Australia, mate :)

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

Unless the guy was a paedophile, a wife beater, or some sort of sicko, I hardly think he 'got what he deserved'. Being an irritating TV presenter is not, in my not very humble opinion, deserving of a painful death. The thing about irritating people on TV is, you can switch them off. Nobody forces you to watch them. I am only aware of the guy from other people talking about him, because I don't watch TV. Saves me from sullying my soul with unpleasantly wishing death on people.

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

The guy made a career out of going up to wild animals and annoying them. One of them reacted in an entirely understandable way, and he got dead. That was all I meant. I didn't wish him dead but there was a certain inevitability about the fact he got killed. I'm very much opposed to 'naturalists' who go into the wild and stir up animals - it's the reason I admire David Attenborough so much. He makes his point without putting himself or anyone else at needless risk.

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

Actually he wasn't annoying anything, he just swam past it.

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

According to Ben Cropp, one of the world's top underwater cameramen, he fucked up:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,20355097-953,00.html

"In this case he was swimming alongside a bull ray, a big black ray, and the cameraman would have been in front, filming him.

"Steve got probably maybe a bit too close to the ray, and with the cameraman in front, the ray must have felt sort of cornered.

"It baulked but didn't spook and go racing away, which would have been fine. It went into a defensive mode, stopped, turned around and lashed out with its tail which has a considerable spike on it.

"Unfortunately Steve was directly in its path and he took a fatal wound," Cropp said. "It was a freak accident in that the spike caught him in the chest . . . near the heart."

[rampagingturtle.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly think he got what he "deserved," but it's almost like God asked him, "Steve, how do you want to go when your time comes?"

"OOH! Can I go around pissing off wildlife until some animal bitch-slaps me? Please? PLEASE??????"

"You got it, Steve!"

"YAY!!!!"

Seriously, he loved what he did and knew he was assuming some considerable risk to do it. Looking at it that way, I have a hard time being all that sad for him personally. The timing sucked (him still having small children and all) but I feel fairly certain that he'd come to terms with the possibility of untimely death a long time ago.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I can't fault his enthusiasm and he did a lot of good. But there is an idea of "you were doing a very dangerous job and doing it in a very dangerous way"

there are safer and (in my opinion) more respectful ways to film wildlife - and that means being as inconspicuous as possible

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Austral;ia is the home of all the world's danger

I know what you mean by got what he deserved - not in a MORAL sense "he was evil and deserved it" but what he did was extremely risky and his way of working was dangerous it was a result of his methods.

I often think that, though he was VERY enthusasiastic and did a lot for wildlife, he lacked a degree of respect that, say, Bill oddie or David Attenborough had. they would watch for HOURs until they saw a creature then quietly film it as it went past. They would never interfere with it

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

They would never interfere with it

Exactly. I'm married to a zoologist, and I can tell you, that non-interference is something that is precious and so easily ignored. The worst thing about Irwin was that he spawned so many imitators, and now any nong with a camera crew and a minimum of wild-life handling experience, is out there playing silly buggers with extremely rare and endangered creatures. People are forgetting that there's another way. We had Marlon Perkins doing this crap too, 40 years ago, and we supposedly learned to do things better. Irwin and his ilk are throwbacks to a much unloved era of wild life filming.

He seems to have made a classic mistake in this situation - he forgot to respect the animal he was dealing with, and assumed he could violate its space with impunity. The ray did what the ray had to do, and what Irwin should have known it was going to do. If he didn't know it would do that when it's a well-known behavioural response, then he was reckless and a fool, and he paid a fool's price. Sadly - it's not him who has to put up with the consequences of his action.

[only-playing.livejournal.com]

Most of my real life friends, and myself, are only surprised that his death did not involve more blood and/or the loss of a limb.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

it is somewhat anticlimatic, isn't it?

[a-roar-a.livejournal.com]

::waves:: hi, I just added you as I find myself lurking around your journal whenever I need to smile. (found you through meridae and interlock in case you're wondering)