Steve Irwin dead

[Vincent]

:-o

I heard it on the radio alarm this morning.  Made me sit right up.  Gobsmacked.

Stingray deaths are quite rare apparently.

edit
Unsurprisingly crocodilehunter.com is inaccessible just now.
/edit

@Karlos
:lol:

[Vincent]

Karlos wrote:
Whilst I think his death is a sad loss (after all, he was massively entertaining) I struggle to comprehend why people find his demise surprising. The guy routinely messed about with dangerous animals. Sooner or later, something was bound to bite, sting, crush, gouge, charge or in some other way do him in...

It's the stingray part I suppose.  Only 2 or 3 people in Australia have been killed by one.

Many people have been injured and it's rarely even major.  The damage by the barb can be bad, but the venom isn't that dangerous to us (if at all).  Steve was just really unlucky that the barb hit between his ribs and got him right in the heart.

Anywhere else and he'd probably be laughing about it on Croc1 with the other guys.

[Vincent]

Oliver wrote:
I think he was something of a reckless crock-boy, but he seemed to be a pretty genuine guy.  Bummer.

Fearless is how I'd describe him.  Not including the fact that he's scared of parrots because they always bite him :-D

[Vincent]

I was on his wiki page at about 1pm here and a few times since and never saw the defaced pages.

[Vincent]

I've just read that the policde have actually been stufying the videotape of his death (he always wanted the cameras to be rolling, even if he was in danger).

Let's hope that does NOT get released to the public, officially or not.

[Vincent]

X-ray wrote:
I suspect that the video footage of Irwin's fatal injury will be of no gore value at all. I am guessing based on the mechanism of the injury that the strike itself was probably quite quick and Irwin may not even have realised that he took a hit through the heart. He probably surfaced and then realised he was in trouble. I wouldn't be surprised if reports come in later that he was able to talk to the guys who got him out of the water. This injury is just like a stab with a screwdriver. It doesn't have to bleed much externally. My bet is there is no blood seen on the footage at all.

According to the BBC (I can't find the other link with more info) he pulled the barb out right after being hit.  There was a fair bit of blood.  The early reports were saying that he didn't have a pulse and he wasn't breathing when he got onto the boat, but he wasn't actually dead at that point according to the cameraman.

[Vincent]

Speaking of khaki, I love the fact that everyone is signing khaki shirts at the zoo due to the lack of commemorance book.

That's a very nice touch.