I Already Miss Steve Irwin

I think this easily qualifies as the most depressing celebrity death since Jim Henson.

Nearly everyone who knows me knows that I have had an abiding crush on Steve Irwin for about a decade--since he first started showing up on Animal Planet with his enthusiastic love for every living thing no matter how crawly or bitey. That passion for wildlife is something I completely identify with. When I was 10, I wanted to be a Greenpeace warrior. I wanted to chain myself to redwoods, drive my boat between the whale and the harpoons, do whatever it took to champion the cause of the voiceless masses. (And somehow, I ended up with a liberal arts degree instead. Ah well. These things happen.) But Steve realized that the key to environmetalism is education; all the Zephyr boats and tree spikings in the world won't make ordinary people give a crap about saving spotted owl habitats, or saltwater crocodiles, or whales, or whathaveyou. The only thing that will do that is education, and Steve Irwin was first and foremost a fantastically talented educator. I know others will take up the torch behind him... but it'll never be quite the same.

He was also cute as hell. Think I'll go buy some Foster's and watch the Croc Hunter movie again. Sniff.