When Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin died, people from around the world of all walks of life gathered and paid tribute to one of the most well known environmentalist who was keen on wildlife protection. Even after his death, people were commenting that Steve Irwin would probably not want people to blame stingrays for the incident. It is a food that some of us take for as “ikan bakar”.
But in this news flash, apparently yet another stingray has gone mad when it jumped out of the water and stab the victim very near the heart. If it had been any closer, the victim will probably suffer a fate similar to that of Steve Irwin. Have stingrays gone crazy? Or is it the environment that has caused a possible sudden surge in stingray attacks?
The entire post can be found in Sydney Morning Herald.
An 81-year-old man is in critical condition after a bizarre attack by a stingray, which leapt out of the water into a boat and stung him in the chest.
Its poisonous stinger - nearly four centimetres long - lodged close to his heart in an incident similar to the one that killed Australian TV naturalist Steve Irwin last month.
Fire Department officials at Lighthouse Point, about 50 kilometres north of Miami in the US, said James Bertakis was in a small recreational boat with two grandchildren yesterday when the spotted eagle ray leapt aboard and struck him.
“It’s just a real freak thing,” said Lieutenant Mike Sullivan, saying the incident occurred on Florida’s Intercoastal Waterway, where stingrays are rarely seen leaping in the air.
Mr Bertakis was undergoing surgery at a local hospital to have the stinger removed from his chest.
A spokeswoman at the hospital said: “His condition is critical. He’s in surgery.”
Crocodile Hunter Irwin, 44, died when a stingray’s barb punctured his heart off Australia’s north coast last month.
It is one of only a handful of stingray fatalities on record.
A Lighthouse Point fire spokesman, Acting Chief David Donzella, told the Miami Herald the stingray was at least one metre wide.
“This certainly doesn’t happen very often,” he said. “It’s very odd that the thing jumped out of the water and stung him on the boat.”
He said when medical crews reached Mr Bertakis, the barb was still in his chest and he was in severe pain because of the toxins in the barb.
He was taken to a local medical centre with a collapsed lung and a closed chest wound, the paper said.
“He’s in pretty bad shape right now,” Mr Donzella said.
The stingray was being kept in a garbage bag at the fire station.
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2 Comments(+Add)
Bizzare indeed. But it’s another isolated incident.
Yes, Stingray as it is shouldn’t have been a dangerous animal. But in 2006 two separate incidents do not make stingrays look good.