What is it about these eerie and gruesome animals that fascinates us so? They're not very pretty; in fact they can be quite frightful. One moment there is stillness and serenity, but in a flash there is lunging and gnashing and thrashing.

We can't help but want to get close to these dangerous creatures, but not too close. We are fightened and fascinated at the same time, so we inch closer and closer. We want to see the teeth, witness the attack– we just want to see it from behind an inch-thick plate of plexiglass. So we visit the alligator at a zoo, either a bona-fide state-run institution or a roadside attraction whose billboards implore us every half mile or so to stop and see the deadly creatures. (T-Shirts! Fudge! Alligators!)

Or we watch alligators and crocs, snakes and lizards, sharks, baracuda, and other assorted sharp-fanged scaly-skinned creatures on television, where we can get up-close and personal from the comfort of our barcaloungers.

Which, of course, brings us to...

The Crocodile Hunter.

The Crocodile Hunter is (as you surely know) Steve Irwin, owner of the Australia Zoo wildlife park and star of his own TV series on the Animal Planet cable network. Like all modern superstars, he is both instantly recognizable and immenently marketable, and has spawned an impressive array of endorsed products, appearances, cameos, and even his own feature length movie.

There is no question that Irwin is a tremendous showman, with excellent timing and enthusiasm– anyone who's seen his show knows this. But he really does care about his work, and about the exotic and sometimes dangerous animals he brings into our homes through the magic of syndicated television. Irwin has established his own wildlife fund, with a mission to "protect and enhance the natural environment". He seems to get involved in a lot of animal rescues as well, risking life and limb to retrieve very large and very grumpy reptiles from less-than-ideal conditions. His wildlife park, Australia Zoo, isn't just about gawking at strange creatures and fantastic crocodile shows, it's also about education and awareness of the world around us. Steve is one of those rare people who has managed to turn his life's avocation into his life's vocation, and then share it with the rest of us.

Irwin is also the subject of some controversy (and is now perhaps less marketable), stemming from an event during a January, 2004 show, in which he fed a raw chicken to a hungry croc with one hand while holding his baby in the other. As one might expect, there was a great public outcry, calls for child abuse charges to be pressed, and general huffy damnation of Irwin as a parent and a professional wildlife expert.

I would never– never– take my child into a pit with a crocodile. Of course, I would never enter a crocodile pit without my child, either. About the only way you would ever get me into a crocodile pit is if my child fell in, and I had to get her out.

But the Irwin family is different from my family or your family. Steve grew up with crocodiles and snakes and assorted other creatures great and small. He has devoted his life to wildlife. He is a conservationist, an educator, and, of course, a terrific entertainer.

Just as his father taught him lessons about wildlife, Steve is passing his experience and learning on to his children. Granted, the familial lessons in the Irwin family are a tad outside of the mainstream, but so are the lessons taught in the Flying Zamboni trapeze family. Getting into pits with crocodiles is what the Irwin family does, and lessons about respect for nature– and the nature of the beast– start early.

If Steve is guilty of anything, perhaps it is simply that of poor judgement; not because he is exposing his children to the family business, but because this exposure happened in such a public way. It should not have been hard to imagine the reaction most folks might have to seeing a baby in such close proximity to a huge croc. Certainly it was showmanship taken a bit too far– but how could it have come to this?

Has our enthusiastic approval (measured by increased sales, ratings, and popularity) of the Crocodile Hunter led him to take even greater and more unnecessary risks, for the sake of our entertainment? Have we egged him on?

Perhaps the answer lies not in the present, but in the past. Let's take a look back at the Alligator Farm of Los Angeles. Perhaps we, the Croc Hunter and his audience, can learn from the example found in a gentler, simpler, less sensational time.