Steve Irwin (1962 – 2006)
Earlier this afternoon, Steve Irwin was killed in a freak accident while filming. He was 44.
I remember that when I first saw Steve Irwin on TV, I found him comical almost to the point of being irritating. He had the heaviest Aussie accent I’d ever heard and it didn’t help that he had to go “Crikey” every now and then. But then I saw him tackle crocodiles, snakes, spiders and lions – basically any animal that you and I would do well to steer clear of – and I found myself hooked because every time I turned on the TV, I’d be wondering “Crikey, what’s he gonna do now?”
Adding to the entertainment was the fact that, for a crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin wasn’t agile by any stretch of the imagination. I remember an episode where he jumped on top of a croc only to end up looking more like a hapless koala perched on an angry tree with teeth and claws than a trained wildlife expert. And the time he went thrashing after a snake in the marshlands and succeeded only in single-handedly displacing the entire river. But what Steve Irwin lacked in bodily grace, he more than made up for with his enthusiasm. There was the trademark bear stance he adopted when circling snarling crocs, that glint in his eye that the camera would catch ever so often and, of course, the way he could rattle off obscure facts about each and every animal he encountered while simultaneously keeping out of harm’s way.
In Steve Irwin, the world had its Crocodile Hunter and it’s almost impossible to believe that such a torrent of passion and zeal could be so irrevocably silenced. Perhaps that’s why I and countless others are so saddened by his passing. In his own way, he’d touched us all.
So here’s to you, Steve. Who’d have thought that catching crocodiles could mean so much?
I remember that when I first saw Steve Irwin on TV, I found him comical almost to the point of being irritating. He had the heaviest Aussie accent I’d ever heard and it didn’t help that he had to go “Crikey” every now and then. But then I saw him tackle crocodiles, snakes, spiders and lions – basically any animal that you and I would do well to steer clear of – and I found myself hooked because every time I turned on the TV, I’d be wondering “Crikey, what’s he gonna do now?”
Adding to the entertainment was the fact that, for a crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin wasn’t agile by any stretch of the imagination. I remember an episode where he jumped on top of a croc only to end up looking more like a hapless koala perched on an angry tree with teeth and claws than a trained wildlife expert. And the time he went thrashing after a snake in the marshlands and succeeded only in single-handedly displacing the entire river. But what Steve Irwin lacked in bodily grace, he more than made up for with his enthusiasm. There was the trademark bear stance he adopted when circling snarling crocs, that glint in his eye that the camera would catch ever so often and, of course, the way he could rattle off obscure facts about each and every animal he encountered while simultaneously keeping out of harm’s way.
In Steve Irwin, the world had its Crocodile Hunter and it’s almost impossible to believe that such a torrent of passion and zeal could be so irrevocably silenced. Perhaps that’s why I and countless others are so saddened by his passing. In his own way, he’d touched us all.
So here’s to you, Steve. Who’d have thought that catching crocodiles could mean so much?
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