CROC
MAN KILLED BY PUSSYCAT

Topics: Complacency; Consequences; Creation; Danger; Death; Fear; Mortality; Nature; Respect; Risk; Tragedy; Vulnerability; Watchfulness

References: Psalm 39:5; Proverbs 6:27; 14:12; Galatians 6:7–8; James 1:14–15; 4:14; 1 Peter 1:24

Steve Irwin, the “Crocodile Hunter,” was killed September 4, 2006, while filming wildlife along the Great Barrier Reef. Irwin was best known for the wildly popular, wildly dangerous antics on Crocodile Hunter, his long-running TV program. During the fourteen years the documentary was on, Irwin survived countless snakebites, was chased up a tree by a deadly komodo dragon, was spat on by a red spitting cobra, and was pulled into the water by a massive crocodile. At the time of his death, he was in the Great Barrier Reef to film a documentary on the ocean’s deadliest creatures.

One of the ocean’s least harmful creatures killed Irwin. Due to poor weather, his team had stopped filming for the “Ocean’s Deadliest” series, so Irwin decided to do some work for a children’s show that was to be hosted by his eight-year-old daughter, Bindi.

While swimming with his cameraman, Irwin came across a five-foot-wide stingray and began to follow it. Stingrays are often called the “pussycats of the sea” because of their docile nature. They can be hand-fed by tourists on excursions from cruise liners. Irwin reportedly got a little too close to the animal, which thrust its poisonous, barbed tail upward in a defensive reflex. The ten-inch, serrated barb went into Irwin’s chest and pierced his heart.

Irwin was only the seventeenth person in the world known to have been killed by a stingray. If the barb had penetrated elsewhere on his body, he would have easily survived. He was rushed to the nearest island and picked up by a medical helicopter, but he died long before reaching the hospital.

—AnimalPlanet.com (September 7, 2006)