What to say about Steve Irwin? His death was one of those half-shocking, half-not kinds of deaths, wasn't it? There's first the "Oh my God, the Crocodile Hunter died!", followed by the inevitable, "Well, given his choice of occupation, no wonder."
We used to watch his shows a bit when we had cable, but since we moved to Buffalo and abandoned cable, Irwin had pretty much fallen off our radar. He did get a bit overexposed a few years back, but I always admired his adventurous spirit and his adoration of nature: take Jacques Cousteau and make him into someone you'd want to hang out with, and you had Steve Irwin.
Death is a strange thing, though. Many people go in a normal, even "hum-drum" kind of way, but some people die in a way that does nothing but confer upon them some kind of legendary quality. If we were to all get deaths that match up somehow with our lives, then of course Steve Irwin would die at the hands of some animal in the wild. Of course Amelia Earhardt would vanish in an airplane. Of course Richard Halliburton would die in a mishap while trying to sail an authentic Chinese junk across the Pacific.
Or, taking fictional characters, of course Captain Kirk would die after defeating a bad guy in a fist fight on a remote planet.
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
3 comments:
I have made the comment on another's blog how Irwin's death is particularly meaningful. Not because he was doing dangerous things, no. It was because if anyone is invincible, it was Steve Irwin. I guess no one is. That is heavy.
As you'd written, Irwin's death wasn't so shocking, but it was slightly ironic. Stingrays are dangerous, but less aggressive than crocs and whatever else he had played with on TV which should never be attempted at home (nor at the zoo).
mark72
Captain Kirk is advertising breakfast cereal in awful, awful commercials on British TV. Commercial British TV is worse than death.
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