Put the shrimp on the barbie
So, he nearly fed his infant child to a gator. So he was always spouting off in commercials and tv specials in that incomprehensible Aussie tongue: “Loo it that! ‘ats a twundred poun’ slicer goan afta a griftey on the ba’ house! Crikey! Uh dewn’t b’lieve it!”
Steve Irwin was the man. He was one of those gator wrestling tough guys without being all pretty and showy about it. You just know he’d drink you under the table at some hole in the wall pub and then insist you get up at 5 a.m. to go on a walkabout.
When I was a boy, I dreamed briefly of growing up to be such a boisterous presence in the badlands of the world. I never got further than the occasional salamander or grass snake plucked from beneath an old board. You can’t get chicks with that kind of puny prey. Although I did earn some neighborhood fame when I caught a sparrow in a homemade trap.
But I digress. Crocodile Man is dead. Long live Crocodile man! “Les roise aw glasses and tewst ‘im, ‘at rugged ‘il wankah!”
BRISBANE, Australia – Steve Irwin, the Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the Crocodile Hunter, was killed Monday by a stingray barb during a diving expedition, Australian media reported. He was 44. The accident happened while Irwin was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state, Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site.
The blonde star of Crocodile Hunter, who made khaki shorts and boots his uniform all year round, was an Australian icon. But his reptile wrestling antics thrilled overseas audiences even more and he became a fixture on US television in the past decade. The son of naturalists Bob and Lyn Irwin, Steve learned to live with dangerous reptiles from a young age at the family’s Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park. He opened his own Australia Zoo in Queensland in 1991, leading him to record the hugely popular Crocodile Hunter the following year. His catchcry of “Crikey!” brought the unfashionable Aussie phrase back into vogue.
