Croc Hunter Explains Crocodile-Baby Stunt

June 14, 2004 -- For Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter from Down Under, one of his closest calls came earlier this year, when he managed to narrowly escape a public relations disaster that threatened to swallow his career whole.

In January, the star of the Animal Planet series, The Crocodile Hunter, arrived at his Australia Zoo in Queensland, holding his one-month-old son, Bobby, and appeared to tempt fate as he hand-fed a 13-foot-long crocodile a dead chicken. Footage of the incident sparked international outrage.

"I don't think there's a person alive who didn't see it, it was like every half hour on the half hour, [thinking] 'how could someone do this?'" said Irwin, who grew up rescuing crocodiles.

In an interview with Good Morning America six months after the incident, Irwin said the camera angle made the stunt look far more dangerous than it really was.

"The camera angle is what we call 'stacked,'" Irwin said. "So if I'm feeding a crocodile here and you shoot it from the side there, you can see the distance that I am from the crocodile easily, because the camera is shooting from [the side]."

But the photographer shot the feeding from behind the crocodile, rather than from the side.

"You shoot back across the croc, the croc looks like it's all over me," Irwin said.

A Jackson Parallel?

Irwin scoffed at the comparison made by people who wrote letters to the show, likening the crocodile hunter to pop star Michael Jackson when he dangled his baby over a hotel balcony in Berlin in 2002.

"Michael Jackson's a singer, you know, and I don't know why a singer would do that," said Irwin. "You know, I've raised my daughter exactly the same way," Irwin said.He said that when his daughter was a month old, the same age as Bobby, he fed crocodiles while holding her in his arms, too.

"That's right, mate," he said. "You know, right in with the same croc, not once — a thousand times!" He says that children who grow up in Australia are taught to not fear animals, and he was trying to instill that in his son.

"In New York, what a parent has to teach their kid is stranger danger and … busy roads," Irwin said. "My kids haven't got that. They've got crocs, they've got snakes."

No Regrets

When asked if he said he wouldn't do it again, he said, "no, I wouldn't say that." And, it didn't hurt his business as a television star. "Heck, no," he said.

Still, it may be a relief to again wrestle mere sharks, snakes — and crocodiles.

"I been working with them all my life, but for the first time in my life, I got to capture the largest crocodiles in the world," Irwin said. In the process, he sometimes gets hurt. Recently, he broke a rib after a crocodile struck him with its tail. But such creatures don't scare him. He says he is most afraid of people.

"The places where I go, the people factor's just so scary," Irwin said. "Bad guys running around with guns and stuff, and of course, the diseases. I'd love to go with my family, but I can't take 'em, where there's like malaria, typhoid, yellow fever, and all these other things that are running around."

One example is bilharzias, a human disease caused by parasitic worms.

"You stick your finger in the water in parts of Africa, this parasite goes in, gets in your brain, you're dead," Irwin said.

For his latest crocodile rescue adventure, Irwin was in Mexico, in an open sewer teeming with many wild things. "I actually had to jump in and catch a croc in the sewage system," He said. "So these things like go up inside my shorts and my shirt. I caught his croc, you know, just freehand, caught him, and these things are biting me, like chewing into me."

That felt like real danger, he said.

"You know what?" Irwin said, laughing. "I'd never take Bob in there!"