Elijah and Azuu

Author notes

#1075 Piety: Sympathetic

Inkmonkey

on Sept. 5, 2006

I love these silly music references.

Okay, I'm sure you've all heard the bad news by now: Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin died on Monday after a stingray stabbed him in the heart. If you ask me, this sounds like a professional job. Crocs are tough, but they're also sluggish. This guy's been embarassing them for years, and they're no closer to taking him out than they were 8 years ago. If anything, he's even wiser to their ways. They paid off the stingray to take him out and salvage what little of their dignity they have left. You don't get a precision instant kill shot on luck. The stingray's a pro; he doesn't want his mark to suffer; it's just another job.


It's really kind of sad how easy it is to joke about a guy like Steve. There was just something so exaggerated and cartoonish about him; he barely seemed real. As someone who paid to see his movie, I can say that it's very hard to think of him as a real, honest-to-God person. I've been saying this around lately, but hearing that Steve Irwin is dead is a bit like hearing that Cap'n Crunch is dead; your first instinct is to think, "That's not possible. He's just a character! What, did they get tired of drawing him? I don't think that counts".

Still, say what you will about what he did to the Australian stereotype, he was still a skilled professional who did a lot of good for the wildlife of his homeland. People make fun of the way he "abducted" crocodiles, but he really did it as a way of removing them from locations where they were in danger from the locals. A lot of innocent creatures owe their lives to the man, and I wish his family good fortune in getting through their loss.