Posted on 09/04/2006 7:03:34 AM PDT by gopwinsin04
I feel for his wife and children. Condolences to them... if they ever read this thread, I hope they will come away knowing that thoughts are with them all, and their loved one was loved by--and touched--many.
How sad. My little boy loves the croc hunter. I doubt that I will tell him.
"Here's a weird thing most of us humans have is, you know, Steve Irwin is all pretty interesting on the telly or in the movie and that, but by crikey it's great when he gets bitten.
"These spitting cobras, they're highly venomous. Spit! And as luck would have it every now and again I do get bitten but I haven't been killed and it's that, you know, that sense of morbidity that people do have." --Steve Irwin
I also read that the cameraman was on the other side of the sting ray and that the ray felt boxed in between them.
ummm....it was tigershark hunting season, and the stingrays in Australia are larger than Cayman stingrays.
It sounds like the ray was spooked by the cameraman, and Irwin was swimming above him and got the 8 inch barb hit the wrong place...
As a doc, I suspect either cardiac arrest from the toxin or cardiac tamponade was the cause of death...wrong barb at the wrong place...but there are two places where the heart is easy to pierce (we docs use those places to give intracardiac injections ).
He could have watched them on the televisor like the rest of us
Here is the ESPN commercial you spoke of.
http://www.albertbanks.com/2006/04/03/albert-the-alligator-espn-commercial/
Sounds like he got two VERY bad things at once.Like getting a knife coated with a neurotoxin(sp) stuck in your heart.
Shimmer, it's funny you should mention that. My 9 year old grandson is devastated over this. He really loved Steve Irwin. That's all he talked about today. I'm sure he's not the only child affected by this. Steve was loved universally by young and old. Terrible thing that's happened.
IIRC, a stingray's barb is normally in a sheath near the base of the tail. When they use the barb (usually when they're stepped on by an unsuspecting wader), they unsheath it and whip the tail straight up, driving the barb deeply into the victim's body and injecting the venom. The barb's also covered with a slime coating, which usually causes infection of the wound. I've never been hit by a stingray, but I've heard that the pain is excruciating for at least an hour or two.
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