Steve Irwin, the so-called “Crocodile Hunter”, died when a stingray barb went through his chest.  In case you don’t know, that’s a poisonous barb.

I’m not shedding a single tear for this loss, although I hate having to say so under the circumstances.  Still, the man annoyed the hell out of me with his pompousness and arrogance.  There’s just no way to watch what he did and think it was ever okay or entertaining.  It wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination.  In all sincerity, I couldn’t stand the man.

And don’t for a moment call this an accident.  It was anything but.  How often did his own stupidity get him in trouble?  I doubt anyone, and not even him before he died, knew how often he’d been bitten, stung, hit, slapped, or otherwise wounded by animals.  And why?  Because he annoyed them as much as he annoyed me.  Always teasing them, spooking them, manhandling them, and otherwise just being a dick to whatever wildlife he could get his grimy paws on.

Whatever.

Anyway, here’s the deal.  Stingrays are poisonous.  They kill.  He was close enough to it and without adequate protection, as was his normal modus operandi, and this time the danger he subjected himself to flagrantly and obnoxiously ended up being his undoing.  I guarantee he was annoying that animal the way he did every other animal.  I assure you he was being overconfident as he always was wont to do.  He put himself in danger hoping to grab more of the spotlight.  This time, he learned a lesson the hard way, and it was a lesson he should have been taught a very long time ago.

I hate to be so cold and callous under the circumstances, but he was a menace and a show-off and a charlatan who would readily endanger his life and the lives of anyone around him if it meant he could throw it on TV and somehow turn it to his advantage, normally by way of inappropriate melodrama at the expense of some animal.

So, no more Crocodile Hunter.  At all.  Ever again.  They’ll undoubtedly show the rest of his taped programs, and someone will most certainly do a program about how he died, but after that I hope to be rid of him entirely.  Let’s make room for some animal programs that don’t involve a spoiled, scene stealing, conceited, lying old man running about acting like an idiot and doing idiotic things that put him and everyone around him in constant and self-inflicted danger.

That said, I have the utmost sympathy for his family.  This is a terrible loss for them.  But they have one thing to be thankful for: he’ll no longer be dangling his own baby in front of hungry alligators and crocodiles that he’d already pissed off (otherwise known as the part of his show where he pretended to be Michael Jackson).  Maybe now the baby can grow up safe and not constantly put in such extreme and unnecessary danger.

By the way, I do mourn the loss of such a curiously popular wildlife activist.  I may have hated the man and I may have doubted that he actively participated in animal conservation, but even I can admit his fame worked to the advantage of animals.