Crikey

I love nature, I love animals, and I love many TV shows about nature and animals.

But I don't like people who go out into the wild and literally molest critters in their natural habitats on camera. I especially dislike boorish obnoxious Down Under stereotypes who do so. Steve Irwin may indeed prove someday to have been a boon to the planet Earth; perhaps his legions of adolescent fans will grow up to appreciate the natural world and the beasties therein, perhaps they will seek to preserve wilderness areas In Remembrance of Him.

I doubt it, however. I fear they'll all go out and try to wrastle reptiles and touch dangerous things. In their enthusiasm to mimic their fallen idol, they'll leave no wild boar unharried, no serpent untormented, no spot of the globe pristine. I in no way celebrate what happened to Irwin, but when I heard his sad fate I did think of the helicopter pilot in Grizzly Man who said of Timothy Treadwell: "He got what he deserved."