Crikey!

I just read this on Yahoo News:

Stingray kills 'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin

Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and conservationist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray while filming off the Great Barrier Reef. He was 44.

Irwin was at Batt Reef, off the remote coast of northeastern Queensland state, shooting a segment for a series called "Ocean's Deadliest" when he swam too close to one of the animals, which have a poisonous barb on their tails, his friend and colleague John Stainton said.

"He came on top of the stingray and the stingray's barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart," said Stainton, who was on board Irwin's boat at the time.

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To be honest, I was never a huge fan of Steve Irwin. But I have to give him his props: He was entertaining, and he was smart in his field. I know for sure that he got many children interested in wildlife. Yes, I remember that he caught a lot of flak for having his infant son in his arms while in very close proximity to a crocodile a couple of years ago. That was legitimate criticism, to be sure. But that doesn't take away from the all the good that he did.

In my opinion, one of the biggest tragedies in Irwin's death is that he didn't get taken out by a croc. Don't get me wrong, I would not have wished death on him at all. But I still remember the movie "Jaws", where Quint, the great shark hunter, dies when he gets eaten by a shark (and repeatedly stabbing the shark with a huge knife in his last moment). I just think it would have been poetic irony if the great crocodile hunter would've went out the same way.

Crikey!