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THE REPTILE WRANGLER

 
Published Aug. 27, 1999|Updated Sept. 29, 2005

Folks can't get enough of him, this BRASH AUSSIE who dances around with DEADLY VIPERS and speaks in exclamation points. Can he be for real?

"Woo hoo! Is this snake aggressive or what, mate?" Steve Irwin shouts, his Aussie accent somehow cranking up his enthusiastic delivery a few more notches. "Very toxic venom. And I tell you what . . . this snake is grumpy, by crikey!"

Given that Irwin is holding a 6-foot black Egyptian cobra by the tail _ twisting the dangerous reptile like he's handling a rubber toy, it's easy to see why the animal might be a little, um, skittish.

Irwin won't let up easily. After all, as he dodges strikes from the cobra while he tries to hold it up for the camera, he's cementing a growing reputation as that crazy Australian guy who handles deadly animals with his bare hands.

Eventually, after a short discourse on its lethality and fierceness _ "I have neh-vah seen a snake more aggressive than this in mah life!" a nearly delirious Irwin shouts at the camera _ he lets the cobra go.

Some animals, it seems, are too dangerous even for the Crocodile Hunter to fool with very long.

"It was so riled up, by the time I got to it, I couldn't get anywhere near it," says Irwin, speaking by telephone from his office at the Australia Zoo in Queensland, where he serves as director. (Astute viewers can note that, during Irwin's Africa's Deadliest Snakes episode Monday night, he actually grabs the cobra's tail for several seconds).

"I wanted to do this and that with him, but he was so upset . . . I actually felt sorry for him," says Irwin, noting that vibrations from passing elephants may have spooked the reptile.

If you've never seen Irwin's death-defying interactions with dangerous animals, his Crocodile Hunter series on cable's Animal Planet channel can be oddly compelling _ like Jack Hanna meets Evel Knievel in Crocodile Dundee's backyard.

For the uninitiated, Animal Planet presents a week's worth of Crocodile Hunter shows at 8 p.m., beginning Sunday and ending Sept. 4 _ mimicking Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week marathons. Episodes with such titles as Steve's Most Dangerous Adventures and Africa's Deadliest Snakes set the tone, which resembles a National Geographic special dreamed up by the guys who film World's Scariest Police Chases.

Grabbing crocodiles from behind, snagging snakes by the tail, allowing scorpions to crawl over his hands and pulling baby alligators from their nest, he extols the fine points of each species in an excited, rapid-fire patter _ encouraging viewers to love the world's most unpredictable predators the way he does.

"When I was very young, I had the front part of my brain cut out . . . which helps a lot," joked Irwin _ whose hearty "G'day mate!" and just-folks Australian style veers close to caricature, but feels genuine.

"I want you to be with me, when I'm encountering a jolly koala, a venomous snake or a crocodile . . . like you're looking over my shoulder," adds the 37-year-old adventurer. "I just go for it and . . . crikey, it works!"

Hailed by some as an exciting naturalist who has reinvigorated the nature documentary, Irwin draws criticism from others who say his antics are empty stunts and parts of the documentaries are staged.

And he thought swimming with crocodiles was dangerous.

"Get the camera right in there'

It's the perfect nature show for a television universe of 500 channels and lightning-fast remote-control clickers.

Forget about leisurely nature videos, filmed over painstaking weeks by a hidden camera crew.

Instead, Irwin's machine-gun chatter _ he seems constantly to talk in exclamation points! _ and fearless handling of fearsome creatures seems calculated to stop channel surfers on a dime.

Either his relentless energy will hook you, or you'll wind up watching and waiting for the worst.

Irwin says viewers could be waiting a long time. "I've never been bitten and envenomated by a snake," the Crocodile Hunter notes proudly. "We've hit on the winning formula, which is, get the camera right in there! The art now is just capturing it as it happens."

Small wonder, then, that Irwin's escapades have made Crocodile Hunter one of Animal Planet's most popular series. (Drawing an average 1.4-million viewers each episode, it shares the Number One title with Emergency Vets).

Good ratings are one thing. And low production costs _ Irwin, his wife Terri and a four-man crew crank out the shows with cheap cameras at a moment's notice _ help make the 3-year-old series even more attractive.

But Animal Planet general manager and senior vice president Clark Bunting knew he had a hit on his hands when the parodies started rolling in _ Dame Edna Cook in England, Fox's Mad TV and South Park have all taken a poke at the wild-eyed blond guy.

"He takes this information that could be didactic and boring and he makes it exciting," notes Bunting, who says the channel is exploring a feature film based on Steve and Terri's life, along with another week of Crocodile Hunter shows at New Year's to ring in the millennium.

"He is one of the most telegenic hosts on TV," the general manager adds. "He makes you feel like he's grabbed you by the lapels, pulled you through the screen and you're experiencing the same thing he is."

It's a style Irwin says he learned at the feet of his father, Bob, the Australia Zoo's founding director and "an icon of crocodilian conservation."

Growing up on the grounds of the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park, he wrangled his first alligator at age 9 and stumbled into the TV game while videotaping his efforts to relocate dangerous crocodiles for his father.

Crocodile wrestling even led him to wife Terri, a native of Eugene, Ore., who met Irwin after watching him subdue a 14-foot animal barehanded.

Though they usually tackle episode tapings together _ his first special for Australian TV was taped on their 1994 honeymoon _ Terri is sticking close to home these days, taking care of their 13-month-old baby, Bindi Sue Irwin.

"Our conservation message that comes through (the episodes) is so strong, I am flabbergasted," says Irwin, who keeps fans up-to-date on his conservation efforts through an official website (www.crocodilehunter.com). "If I can get people actively talking about what they saw on TV, that's all we've gotta do. It's the most powerful force on Earth."

There's a skeptic born every minute

Of course, not everybody loves Irwin's shtick.

More conventional herpetologists dismiss the excitable Australian's work as pure entertainment _ more P.T. Barnum than Jane Goodall _ a carnival sideshow dressed up to look like a reputable nature program.

"If you . . . showed somebody putting on a blindfold and walking across the highway (on TV), would you think that was a good thing to do?" says Wayne King, a curator of herpetology in the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.

"You talk to almost any wildlife biologist in the field . . . and very few of them would approve of the way he handles animals," adds King, a 32-year veteran of the field. "Yes, (trained professionals) can handle cobras bare-handed, but why? What purpose is there, besides showing how brave and marvelous (the host is)?"

His biggest concern? That in Florida, where growing human encroachment on alligator territory is bringing more clashes with the animals, Crocodile Hunter may set a horrible example.

"I've seen situations where people on a picnic will give a hot dog to a child and tell them to feed it to an alligator lying there," the curator adds. "People, on occasion, are incredibly stupid. So why would we want to put something on TV that will encourage people to do something stupid?"

At age 88, Bill Haast estimates he has milked venom from dangerous snakes "millions of times" as director of the Miami Serpentarium Laboratory in Punta Gorda. He got a close look at Irwin's style last year, when the Crocodile Hunter taped some footage for a show at his facility.

Haast won't say whether the show could lead to stupid viewer stunts, but he knows one thing about the footage filmed in Florida.

All of it was staged.

"We took a rattler, put it down a hole and induced it to come out as if we had been out in the wild," adds Haast. "I don't think there's any scientific approach to what he does. It's TV entertainment."

Such staging seems a direct contrast to Irwin's videos, where viewers are given the impression he stumbles across these animals while hunting in the wild. But Haast says many nature documentary filmmakers similarly place animals for filming.

"It's for the practicality of it . . . You could hunt for a week and not find a scorpion," Haast said. "We have a snake pit that is an acre and a half, with 25 snakes in there, amd it might take us an hour to find one _ that's how well they hide."

Producer John Stainton says the staging at Haast's serpentarium _ where they filmed a snake striking at the camera and another traveling through a gopher hole _ is a rare occurrence.

"Steve's got an amazing sense for finding stuff," adds Stainton, noting that Irwin will probably return to Florida in a few weeks to catch some alligators for a future episode. "What we make, with very few exceptions, is real and happening as we film it."

Both Irwin and Animal Planet's Bunting deny that viewers are likely to mimic what they see on Crocodile Hunter: "Lots of guys think they can play pro football . . . until they see a player with 4 percent body fat," Bunting says.

Still, there are times when Irwin's fame looms as large as the elephants he passes on the African veldt.

"I was in Tombstone, Ariz. filming rattlesnakes _ a whole den of them _ and I went into a restaurant to (use the restroom)," he says. "And I'm standing there, and these young blokes, college students, were honored to meet me and wanted to shake my hand. But I'm right handed."

He breaks into an avalanche of hearty laughter, as the obvious implication dawns on his interviewer. "That hammered home how overwhelming it is to be Steve Irwin," he adds, laughing harder. "I'm going to have to learn how to shake with another hand."