Lessons from the Crocodile Hunter
Ever since Steve Irwin’s death, Animal Planet has been showing as many Crocodile Hunter shows and specials as they can, and yesterday I found myself stopping on one for a while.
A team from the Australia Zoo along with some men from the Army were working on getting a croc moved to safety. She had been living in deplorable conditions: the pond she was living in was so filled with trash and carcasses and utter filth that she couldn’t even fully submerge under the water. She was teased and taunted by neighborhood kids for years. And she suffered not only the physical effects of this way of living, but the psychological effects, too.
And all these guys risked their lives to go in, grab her, haul her to the ocean where they could clean her up, get rid of the disease and filth, check her for injuries, and basically assess her needs, and then take her back to a new, clean enclosure at the zoo where she would be able to properly submerge and be taken care of.
And I found tears coming to my eyes as I thought, “Why don’t we do this for each other? For people?”
There are people out there living in deplorable conditions, in filth - both literal and figurative, who are suffering both physically and psychologically from surroundings they can’t escape from on their own. And going in after them might be dangerous, but they need help or else they’ll die that way. We should be the ones going in there, pulling them to safety, soothing their hurts, and offfering them hope for a better life. We should be the ones taking care of them, continuing to take care of them after their intitial rescue. That croc wouldn’t have survived if they had just pulled her out, cleaned her up, and then let her loose in the wild. She had scars that ran deeper than the surface, that needed prolonged care. And the folks at Australia Zoo will be taking care of her for the rest of her life. That’s how we should be.
And it especially hit me when Steve, the last one in the enclosure, encouraging the croc to go on into her new home, said (narrating), “I’ll protect her with my life, with my body, with everything I have. I love her.”
An example to live by.