Short version:
She was an environmental activist,...When Val climbed into her vessel that morning in 1985, she did so in good faith.
The saltwater crocodile is a different beast, and it boils down to intent. As crocodile researcher Professor Grahame Webb has put it: "There is no way of avoiding nor sugarcoating the predatory nature of saltwater crocodiles. If you dive off the Adelaide River bridge, 60 km east of Darwin's city center, and start swimming, there is a 100% chance of being taken by a saltwater crocodile. It is not the same as swimming with sharks."..
We know so much about this attack because Val survived it. But also because she was a philosopher. She didn't just survive it, she thought about it, she examined its consequences, and she wrote about it.
At the heart of her insight is the knowledge that we are food—"juicy, nourishing, bodies" for the rest of the animal kingdom. We forget that. Or perhaps, we never really come to know it. Val knew, but when she found herself as prey, she rejected the idea. I'll let her speak for herself here:
"My disbelief was not just existential but ethical—this wasn't happening,couldn't be happening. The world was not like that! The creature was breaking the rules, totally mistaken, utterly wrong to think I could be reduced to food. As a human being, I was so much more than food. Were all the other facets of my being to be sacrificed to this utterly undiscriminating use, was my complex organization to be destroyed so I could be reassembled as part of this other being?"
With indignation as well as disbelief, I rejected this event. It was an illusion! It was not only unjust but unreal! It couldn't be happening. After much later reflection, I came to see that there was another way to look at it. There was illusion alright, but it was the other way around. It was the world of 'normal experience' that was the illusion, and the newly disclosed brute world in which I was prey was, in fact, the unsuspected reality, or at least a crucial part of it… both I and the culture that shaped my consciousness were wrong, profoundly wrong —about many things,...
The above is a testimony to the delusion of idolators who make nature itself an object of worship, living in denial of the basic nature of beasts, and defending such as victims which they slavishly defend as misunderstood. And like cult members who finally see how selfish and cruel their false Christ is, then this women is finally "deprogrammed" thru a unadorned cruel encounter with raw nature that only sees her as a means to satisfy lust.
Yet which nature and its own suffering is actually a consequence of man's original sin of idolatry against the giving God, and which sinners the unselfish true Christ gave Himself for, thanks be to God.
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (Romans 5:12)
For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8:20-23)
I thought this was going to be a thread about Islam...