By Craig P. Dixon, southcoast247.com correspondent Social Commentary 75
September 9, 2006
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this week’s much anticipated edition of Craig Cares. I’m Craig Dixon.
The other night, I was rather intoxicated and sitting at my computer when I noticed the headline, “Croc Hunter Steve Irwin Dead”.
I was immediately taken aback, for I’d thought the man invincible. He was always in the face of danger, imminent death only inches away, and then he’d escape, laughing at death as if she were some whore he’d fled without paying.
Turns out death is no whore at all. He can be a callous, insatiable, unfeeling bastard at times. At others, he’s a sympathetic, seemingly reluctant entity, sweeping an elderly, suffering patient toward the abyss in an act that appears almost compassionate.
Yet, if you fuck with death long enough, he’s eventually going to get you. And nobody fucked with death more than Steve Irwin.
Now, when I first noticed the headline, I assumed Irwin had been taken down by one of his zoo’s crocs. He’d been dealing with them for such a long time that I surmised he’d dropped his guard around one and got swept up in some terrible saltwater croc death roll.
But no such luck. Those crocs didn’t get him. Irwin met his death at the extremely capable hands of…a stingray.
A stingray? Aren’t those the things you’ve got to go out of your way to piss off? You’ve got to step on one to receive a sting. And absolutely nobody dies of stingray stings.
Nobody…except Steve Irwin. My guess is Irwin was climbing all over one of these rays, antagonizing the shit out of it (as anyone who’s watched his show knows was his schtick), when the thing finally turned on him. That stinger went under Irwin’s ribcage and pierced his heart. I heard one marine biologist refer to the chances of such an instance happening as, “one in a million”.
But somehow Irwin found a way to pull it off. And in the last, ballsiest moment of his life, Irwin pulled the barb from his heart, sealing his fate.
It’s too bad, really. But you know what they say: Mess with the bull, and you get the horn.
Or, in this case, the stingray’s barb.
The other night, I was rather intoxicated and sitting at my computer when I noticed the headline, “Croc Hunter Steve Irwin Dead”.
