Steve Irwin 1962-2006

Monday, Sept. 04, 2006 - 6:39 a.m.

So on the one night on this long holiday weekend when I decided to go to sleep early, shit happens.

I usually sleep with the radio on low, and I wear a soft pair of headphones. Once in awhile, a news story will jolt me out of a sound sleep, and that's what happened today:

The naturalist and television star Steve Irwin has died in a diving accident in far north Queensland. He was 44.

Police say he was stung through the heart by a bull stingray while diving off Port Douglas. He was filming a documentary when the accident occurred around midday AEST near the Low Isles.

A helicopter arrived with paramedics on board to try to resuscitate him, but it was too late.

Cruise operator Steve Edmondson and his passengers watched on as paramedics tried to revive the television star. "We are obviously very saddened by the news. It's a very unusual incident. We're all big fans of Steve Irwin," he said.

His family are believed to be flying from Brisbane to Cairns this afternoon.

Irwin, who was was born in Victoria in 1962, inherited his love of reptiles from his father. His father Bob was a keen reptile enthusiast and moved the family to Queensland in 1970 to open a small reptile park on the Sunshine Coast.

Irwin took over the family business in 1991 and grew it into Australia Zoo. In 1992 he ventured into television, making the first series of the Crocodile Hunter while he and his wife Terri were on their honeymoon. When the program aired in the United States, he shot to international fame.

Irwin is survived by his wife Terri and two children.

Mind you, I don't have a single thing to add to what anybody else has said about this.

However, I was reading the works of E. E. Cummings just yesterday, and I can share with you a couple of stanzas of the poem 'my father moved through dooms of love', which Cummings wrote as a memorial to his dad:

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

My deepest sympathies go to Terri, and Bindi and Bob.

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I don't feel like writing about anything else today.

See ya tomorrow.

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