My Hero, The Crocodile Hunter

Dear Steve,

I am writing this letter to you, but it is pointless. You are dead.

You died 15 years ago, floating in the cold and lonely ocean, pierced through the chest by a stingray barb. Your last words, muttered to your shell-shocked cameraman as he desperately tried to resuscitate you, were, "I'm dying." And die you did.

When you passed, you broke my little heart. See, I was only 10 years old at the time, but I was already a veteran watcher of The Crocodile Hunter. Every Sunday I would wake up early and glue myself to the TV, binging episode after episode of your hit TV show. What my young self liked most about your show was the way your giant presence seemed to leap off the screen. Your unabashed enthusiasm, your gregarious personality, and the unmistakable passion in your voice when you spoke about wildlife conservation, all of these things served to enamor me. They drew me to the screen like a hypnotized fly towards fire. You were so much larger than life.

I have to admit, however, that I was first drawn in by the title of your show, but I quickly found it misleading. "This man isn't hunting crocodiles," I remember thinking." He's helping them." The Crocodile Hunter featured you episode after episode of you wrestling with crocodiles, sharks, alligators, tarantulas, centipedes, and snakes—all of these so-called wild and terrifying monsters, but I quickly realized that, despite the denouncements of your critics, you weren't playing with these animals, or hurting them for the sake of entertainment. You were risking your life to teach us all a valuable lesson.

And the lesson is Man isn't high and lofty, a creature disconnected from Nature. We are part of Nature, and always will be.

This lesson detonated like a time bomb in my impressionable young mind. See, I grew up in Singapore, a tiny city-state filled with concrete buildings and millions of people. We are taught here, from a young age, to study hard, to find a good job, to settle down and eke out a rich but ultimately passionless existence. And prior to watching you, that was all I knew, all I aspired to be.

After watching you, however, the first stirrings of aspiration began to awaken in the recesses of my mind. I remember my form teacher asking the class, one day, the age-old question of, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" My peers all gave classical answers:

"I want to be an astronaut!"

"I'd like to be a scientist!"

"I want to be be a doctor!"

"A dentist!"

I, however, gave my unsuspecting teacher a far stranger answer: I said I wanted to grow up to become Steve Irwin.

So you see why I was so heartbroken when you died. My hero, going out with not a bang but a whimper, killed by a fish in the sea. When I saw the news on TV, I cried myself to sleep. I wept throughout the night, and well into the very next day. When the sadness passed, however, there came a flare of hot, hot anger.

That night, I went out and purchased a sambal stingray (they serve stingray in South-East Asia) for dinner. I ate it. And when I did, I felt a sense of delicious vengeance. "That's for killing my idol, stingray!" My little mind crowed. But ultimately, like all self-righteous actions born of hate, the feel-good feeling abandoned me, to be replaced by a sense of emptiness, and guilt at the terrible thing I have done.

I now know that this goes against everything you believed in. But try not to blame me too much, Steve. Remember, I was only ten.

In the years that followed, I tried to bury my feelings, but I found that I could not. You awoke something in me, Steve, something that cannot be denied.

Gone was the good Singaporean child who aspired to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a dentist. In his place, an artist was born. I wanted to spend my life not in the pursuit of money, but towards advancing the things I cared about.

Wildlife conservation was still a raw and weeping wound, so I tried my hand at other things. I acted on stage. I was good at it, but I ultimately found it far too self-serving and narcissistic. Then I joined the school debate club, but soon found that arguing with hoity-toity posh kids all day was not my cup of tea.

When I graduated, however, I—wonder of wonders!—discovered my true love, mixed-martial arts. I stuck with it for a while. I became pretty good at it. Imagine my delight when I found out that you, too, were a fan of the manly art.

You did not just watch the sport, or merely dabble in it. You practiced it, throwing kicks and wrestling men while wearing your trademark boots and khakis. You said that mixed-martial-art training helped you to develop the strength you so require for wrestling crocodiles. When I read that, it brought a smile to my face.

Perhaps your love for my sport was what made me think about wildlife conservation again. For years, I steered away from the topic. For years, the only link I had to my first love was going on occasional visits to the zoo, the Singaporean Zoo you were a patron of, the zoo you famously said was second only to the Australian Zoo. I, in an oddly Freudian move, would often bring my dates there, and there, I would bombard them with my deep knowledge of obscure animal facts.

"Did you know that the Peregrine Falcon is the fastest animal in the world?

"Did you know that the Inland Taipan is the most venomous snake in the world?"

"Did you know that the Asian Junglefowl is the closest living animal to the Tyranossaurus Rex?

"Did you know that the platypus is one of the only two mammals in the world who reproduce by laying eggs—the second being the spiny anteater?"

Did you know, did you know, did you know; facts upon facts upon facts. The only fact I didn't tell them was the fact that I was still enamored by you.

Yes, after all these years, you, Mr. Steve Irwin, still manage to maintain a firm hold on my heart. It is because of you that I never use disposable straws when I drink. It is because of you that I go on weekend outings to clean up the local beach. And it is because of you that I am now writing this letter.

You taught me more than to just to love animals. You taught me that we are, all of us, intensely, indescribably, and undisputedly, connected to the world. You taught me that what we do in life, will cast echoes throughout eternity. So why then did I, you ask, at the start of this letter, say that my letter to you is pointless?

You'll have to forgive me for it, Steve. Clickbait is something else I learned from you. The Crocodile Hunter. Hah!

More like The Crocodile Savior.

So here's to you, Steve, you wonderful, wonderful man, you one-of-a-kind fireball you, you burning meteor gone too soon. I, and many others, am forever in your debt, and I dedicate this letter to you in love and undiminished admiration. Thank you for leading by gregarious example, for living your truth to the fullest, for teaching me to follow my heart. I hope that wherever you are, there is plenty of action to be had, and many an animal to be saved.

Your long-time fan; now and forever,

Alvin