R.I.P., Crocodile Hunter

[herringbonekid]

sorry to be the lone dissenting voice here, but i disagree with the way he went about his work. i think David Attenborough and the 'Life On Earth' team made the perfect animal documentaries. they were beautifully filmed with hidden cameras which simply observed the action. Irwin turned it into an extreme spectator sport. dangerous animals should be treated with the respect they deserve. there are many cases of people who mistakenly believed they had a special affinity with dangerous animals and ended up getting killed by one. so his death is not a surprise at all.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

sorry to be the lone dissenting voice here, but i disagree with the way he went about his work. i think David Attenborough and the 'Life On Earth' team made the perfect animal documentaries. they were beautifully filmed with hidden cameras which simply observed the action. Irwin turned it into an extreme spectator sport. dangerous animals should be treated with the respect they deserve. there are many cases of people who mistakenly believed they had a special affinity with dangerous animals and ended up getting killed by one. so his death is not a surprise at all.

Whether we approve of his methods, I am sure we are all sorry to see the passing of a fellow human being, a father, and a husband in so shocking and sudden a manner.

 

[Twitch]

You are right Hemingway. If any dim wits went out and attemped to snatch up a cobra by the tail simply because Steve didn't continually warn "don't try this at home," that's their problem.

 

[carebear]

You are right Hemingway. If any dim wits went out and attemped to snatch up a cobra by the tail simply because Steve didn't continually warn "don't try this at home," that's their problem.

That's actually not that hard, cobras are pretty slow. The trick is to make sure you're taller than the cobra.

The reason Irwin was grabbing things comes from his day job. He started out IIRC by capturing crocs and such that were in human-inhabited areas and moving them back to the wild or to game farms. He wasn't "gator wrasslin'" for fun.

Admittedly he would grab things so you could see them on camera but naturalists still do that today for identification/classification vs. the no-impact observation of natural behavior.

It wasn't all "show business".

 

[DanielJones]

All in all, his passion and personality will be missed. He may have seemed over the top for some, but when you love your job that much it's going to show.

Cheers.

Dan

 

[Hemingway Jones]

He was an individual and I respect individuals.

Mostly, I feel true sorrow for his family who no longer have their father, but will see constant reminders in reruns.

Brandon Lee once said something along the lines of, "You all lost your icon; I lost my dad!" -It was moving.