A Croc’s Point Of View

Earlier this week The Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, passed away when, of all things, a stingray shot its barb through his heart. The passing of Irwin is sad, as he leaves a wife and two kids behind, but he also leaves a legacy of angering dangerous creatures all over the planet. With that in mind I now turn over the reigns of my blog, just for today, to a crocodile to get his point of view on the passing of Steve Irwin.

First off, thank you to Adam Bernard for giving me this opportunity and all apologies about any typos, but I’m a crocodile for Christ’s sake! When I and the rest of the crocodile community first heard of the passing of Steve Irwin we were shocked. Was it really true? Was the guy who had woken us up countless nights and teased us with his child really no more? When we learned it was the truth and he really had passed on we became annoyed, we became annoyed at YOU Mr. Stingray.

Now don’t get me wrong, we didn’t like being woken up and having “CRIKEY! Look at the chompers on that one!” yelled in our faces, but Mr. Stingray it was our job to take him out. Yes, we hadn’t managed to do it yet, but you could see we were getting closer. With each time he got near us with a stick we got closer. It was all a grand plan. We wanted to grab Mr. Irwin in our jaws, but no, you had to go and shoot him with your barb. You, Mr. Stingray, one of the most docile creatures on earth, will forever have the title being the one who claimed the life of The Crocodile Hunter.

The crocodile community isn’t the only sector of the animal kingdom that isn’t happy about this either, stingray, you’ve also made some enemies in the reptile world as I can’t tell you how many countless snakes he’s poked with sticks and drawn out of shady brushes. Oh no, you are not a popular one anymore Mr. Stingray, you took our prize!

Nothing was more emasculating (what, a croc can’t have a serious vocabulary? Look it up!) than hearing we were one-upped by a sea creature of your ilk. Many in our community have not been able to eat for days, which is probably OK since we already weigh a ton, but there are a few crocs in my lake that are starting to look like Nicole Richie on a bad day. All we can do now is mope around wondering what went wrong, wondering why we couldn’t accomplish what we’d set out to do, eat Steve Irwin. Thanks to you, Mr. Stingray, we will never get that glory.

Without Steve Irwin to eat our lives have taken a decidedly downward turn. We no longer plot and scheme. If you see a bunch of us in a group now we’re probably just talking about which cast member of Survivor we’d most like to chow down on. Other than engaging in that type of water cooler talk we really just wander around accepting the occasional marshmallow from an idiot tourist, not even bothering to eat the human throwing the sugary balls of fluff to us because it’s just not a big enough challenge. In fact, you can run up to us and pet us now (Adam Bernard does not endorse the petting of crocodiles no matter what this one tells you!).

So there you have it. This is what you’ve done to us Mr. Stingray. Steve Irwin has been shot through the heart, and you’re to blame! (what, a croc can’t reference Bon Jovi?). And while you may not have given yourself a bad name you have given all of us crocs one. We are now nature’s giant wusses.