Stingrays

I hate to get stuck on the subject of Steve Irwin. When he was alive I didn't like him. But people are saying the strangest things about him after his death. My favorite is, how odd it was that Mr. Irwin was killed by the stingray, which never harmed a fly except for 17 people, when he spent his life tangling with spiders and crocodiles and snakes and other super-harmful creatures. It is like, they say, a famous Nascar driver getting rear-ended at a traffic light and breaking his neck.

These people just aren't thinking. Admittedly, it wasn't likely that Mr. Irwin would get killed by a stingray. But what did these people think would happen to him? What wild animal is really that dangerous? Steve Irwin made his name by wrestling crocodiles, and there was always the possibility that one of them would bite his hand off. But kill him? His cameraman obviously carried a sidearm. Practically any large animal takes a little time to savage you, and there are things you can do about it in the meantime.

On the other hand, all the most dangerous snakes and spiders have antivenoms associated with them. Fatality rates are pretty low if you have the appropriate drugs and a knowledge of first aid, which of course he would. I certainly can't think of any venomous animal that kills a lot of the people it bites, let alone well-prepared ones.

Really the only animal that could kill the careful self-promoter is something that stabs at his vital organs, very suddenly. Stingrays do this (apparently). Does anything else? Traditional animals with traditional jaws would have a hard time biting somebody in the chest. Except for some snakes, I can't think of any small animals that have long enough teeth, and Steve Irwin was hardly going to go out like Cleopatra. So it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Mr. Irwin was going to die either of a stingray sting, or of a self-inflicted gunshot wound when he realized how empty his life was. For his legacy's sake, I'm glad it was the former.