Who'd have thought it would be a sting ray?
Rest in peace, Steve-o. Crikey! I loved you like a son. Prayers for Terri, Bindi and Bob.
Posted on 09/03/2006 9:29:57 PM PDT by lunarbicep
Edited on 09/04/2006 5:53:46 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
He was killed in a freak accident in Cairns, police sources said. It is understood he was killed by a sting-ray barb that went through his chest.
He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas filming an underwater documentary and that's when it occured.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Watching the Discovery Channel now.
Sounds like he would have been a Republican.
From the discovery link:
"Prime Minister John Howard, who hand-picked Irwin to attend a gala barbecue to honor President Bush when he visited in 2003, said he was "shocked and distressed at Steve Irwin's sudden, untimely and freakish death."
Bump for Steve!
Tribute on the Discovery channel NOW 6PM EST!
How sad, his Dad is talking ... burying your child.
Steve would have been doing this regardless if he had ever become a television personality or not. You didn't "get" him.
I'm praying right along with you cake_crumb.
Reminds me uncomfortably of the Michael Jackson dangling incident.
Maybe I was just very young but I thought he did very well with it. Watched it into my teens. And he didn't have to play Tarzan or take risks (with Jim) for his ratings.
Wild Kingdom was a dignified nature show that was loved for over a generation.
My post was responding to Viet Nam_67-68 that said Marlon Perkins was a bore.
I don't believe that at all.
I loved Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom which was a perfect show for a time when viewers didn't know the Kalahari from the Steppes.
Perkins became host of Wild Kingdom when it debuted in 1963. Through his fame on television, he became an advocate for the protection of endangered species. He retired from zookeeping in 1970. Perkins died of cancer in 1986. In 1990 he was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.Wow! Marlin sure knew how to deal with those uppity libmedia types!
Although Walt Disney had fabricated footage of a mass suicide of lemmings on Wild Kingdom,[1] Marlin Perkins punched a reporter, Bob McKeown, who asked questions about whether wildlife films were inaccurately staged.[2].
During his career, Perkins suffered multiple bites from venomous snakes. During a rehearsal of Zoo Parade, he was bitten by a timber rattlesnake. In other incidents, he was also bitten by a cottonmouth and a Gaboon viper.[3]
.
A barb can, in actuality, be up to six inches long. In this case, he unwittingly frightened the ray, it's tail lashed out, and the barb entered just beneath Steve's ribcage bearing slightly to the left, and fully penetrated/perforated his heart, front to back.
In tandem with the poison (though that is usually not considered fatal) he was dead virtually instantaneously. Extensive efforts were made to revive him via CPR, etcetera, but the location, size, and severity of the wound made those attempts naught but an exercise.
Even had a surgical team been on the boat on standby, sterilised and fully gowned up, with a fully equipped O.R. as it were, he could not have been saved.
He will be missed by all who respected the natural world, and lived a life at it's edge!
Requiescat In Pacem
A.A.C.
Wild Kingdom's Jim Fowler and Jack Hanna on Fox (Hannity) now
Scientific American interview with crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, March 23, 2001.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0000462F-9484-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21
I suppose that is to say that I'm just not part of the cult, then.
My favorite sequence from Wild Kingdom was one when Marlin and Jim were helping to evacuate spider monkeys from an area that was being flooded by a new dam. They were in a flat-bottomed boat, while the camera man was in another boat. The monkeys were in a tree that was surrounded by water. There were several dozen of them. Marlin was holding a bag while Jim tried to hit the monkeys with an oar and knock them out of the tree, into the bag. One of the monkeys ran down the oar, Jim's arm and into the boat. Marlin and Jim cleared the boat and sat in the water, watching the monkey run back and forth in the boat barring his teeth at them and chattering.
There are 2 things which might have killed him. If it struck the heart, and the muscle of the heart penetrated, he bled into the pericardial sac, ant then taponaded the heart...no cardiac output....death. Or if the heart was not punctured the lung may have been punctured and Mr.Irwin develovped a tension pneumothorax....this restricts the oxygen transfer, cardiac output... and if rapidly severe will go on to kill the patient. It is unlikely that he was struck in the aortic arch and bled to death.
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