The Crocodile Hunter: The Incredible Life and Adventures of Steve and Terri Irwin (19 page)

Another sad trophy for dingo bounty hunters.

All in all, the reception of our wildlife documentaries has been a bit overwhelming. To date, our series has gone to air in over thirty countries, most recently in the United States. It has been a real honor to have been so widely accepted. If Steve and I can demonstrate how marvelous it is to work so closely with nature, we have a chance of encouraging others to join in to help. Children have been the most enthusiastic.

The filming continues. Steve and I joke that as long as our legs still work, we will press on. The other life forms we share this planet with are exciting, vibrant, interesting creatures, and Steve and I are determined to show how important wildlife conservation is to them and to us.

God's Twenty Acres

W
ildlife documentary filming on location continues to be one exciting adventure after another, but the foundation of everything we do is definitely at Beerwah in Queensland, at our zoo. And daily life there can be anything from business dilemmas to wildlife dramas. I certainly never get bored waking up each morning and wondering, What will happen today?

When Steve and I first took over running the zoo we were eager to make his parents proud of our work. One of the first projects we took on together concerned Harriet, our giant Galapagos land tortoise, which we believed to be of the subspecies
Geochelone elephantopus guntheri
. We also believed that she had been brought to Australia some 130 years earlier on a whaling ship. It was not unusual for the whaling fleets to load up large numbers of these gentle giants as they passed the Galapagos Islands on the way to Australia from the Americas, the tortoises serving as a source of much-needed fresh meat during their three-month journey. Those taken onboard the whalers would be butchered one by one as they were needed. It was thought that, somehow, Harriet escaped the knife and ended up as someone’s pet before taking up residence at the City Botanic Gardens in Brisbane, around the turn of the century.

Studying tortoise behavior can be dirty work.

We were quite comfortable with Harriet’s story and quoted her history at our daily giant tortoise demonstrations, but then we met up with Scott Thompson, one of Australia’s leading tortoise experts. Everyone who encounters our 400-pound Harriet is impressed, but Scott was overwhelmed. He came up from Canberra on more than one occasion to study our old girl and felt that she didn’t match the story we had been told about her.

After taking many measurements and even more photographs, Scott was convinced that Harriet was not a
G. e. guntheri,
but rather a
G. e. porteri
. Steve and I were excited at the thought of Harriet having some unusual history that might actually be documented somewhere and we gratefully enlisted Scott’s help to research her story.

Our first step was the discovery that new DNA work on tortoises was being conducted in the United States at Texas A & M University. There, Ed Lewis was developing baselines from wild-bred tortoises on the Galapagos Islands, and these would enable identification through comparison of DNA of purebred subspecies in captivity. This was exciting news that meant we could scientifically determine exactly what Harriet was.

Harriet-Darwin’s tortoise.

Another development came about when Scott Thompson visited the Queensland Museum in Brisbane to gather more tortoise data. By luck he came upon a giant tortoise preserved in spirit at the back of the museum’s storage warehouse. Scott couldn’t properly identify the tortoise as it was stored upside down. After turning the crate over, Scott discovered these words carved on the giant shell: “Tom—giant Galapagos land tortoise died 1929 Brisbane Botanic Gardens.”

Scott couldn’t believe his eyes. This preserved tortoise substantiated a newspaper article he’d seen reporting on three giant Galapagos tortoises brought to Australia in 1841 for the Brisbane Botanic Gardens. Two had died in the 1920s. Scott was sure Tom must have been one of them. Perhaps Harriet was the third tortoise? If that were true, it would be incredible. The three tortoises had been collected in 1835 by Charles Darwin, and if Harriet was the survivor she would be the oldest documented giant land tortoise in the world. This news just made it all the harder to wait for Ed Lewis and his all-important DNA work to be completed!

Steve and me with Fijian crested iguanas.

My experiences at the zoo continued to be a crash course in everything reptilian, my initial responsibilities including the baby crocodiles and the baby goannas. The little lizards were my favorites. They thought they were very tough and would tail-whip me violently every time I cleaned or fed them. My charges included everything from perenties to sand goannas and even the sleek little mertens water monitors. Although I was also learning to handle the adult versions of these species, I wasn’t yet skilled enough to handle full-grown crocodiles and alligators on my own—or so I thought!

My graduation course with large adult alligators came quite unexpectedly. A friend of mine was over from Oregon for a visit. She has always been a big wildlife fan and had worked with me for several years at the emergency veterinary hospital. Now she was going to fulfill a dream by volunteering to work at our zoo for a few weeks to learn more about Australian fauna.

Dawn arrived tired after a tedious twenty-hour flight and I assured her that she would be feeling better after a good night’s sleep. In the morning I’d show her how to clean and feed our eighteen species of bird. Dawn was only too happy to start her experiences Down Under with our sweet little kookaburras and tawny frog-mouths!

Steve was especially restless that night and had trouble getting any sleep. He is always alert to anything unusual going on, but even after checking the entire zoo grounds shortly after midnight, he couldn’t find anything wrong. He finally got up for the day’s work just after 4
A.M
., while it was still dark. I didn’t even hear him leave.

Suddenly, I was jarred awake when the door slammed open. “It’s the alligators, come quick!” Steve was yelling. I leapt out of bed and started scrambling for my clothes with no idea what was going on. “Just put your shoes on and hurry!” Steve shouted over his shoulder as he ran out the door. I pounded on Dawn’s door as I laced up my shoes and she dutifully raced after me in her pajamas as we hurried toward the alligator enclosure.

Fighting alligators can make quite a mess.

As we got to the outer safety fence, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Locked together in mortal combat were our two largest female alligators, aptly named the Fang Sisters. Their jaws were clamped down on each other’s head in some sort of dispute. Their small, peglike teeth were even puncturing skull and there was blood everywhere. Obstinate as bulldogs, they were not letting go! It would be hours before the staff would start arriving and these girls were busy trying to pull each other’s head off
right now
.

Steve was over the two fencelines in an instant, so Dawn and I followed him in. “Terri, you jump on that one and, Dawn, jump the other one,” Steve instructed. “Hold onto their heads while I get their jaws apart.” Luckily, Dawn didn’t even have time to think and she followed my lead, lying down flat across the alligator and hugging its head tightly to minimize movement. The alligators were growing tired from all their struggling but it still took Steve some time to pry them apart. He finally had to stand on the lower jaw of one of the Fang Sisters and use both hands to pull her teeth up and out of the head of the other. But once he had them separated, they immediately swung around to start fighting again.

Dawn and I jumped clear as Steve pulled one of the alligators by the tail in order to move her away from the conflict. Like a giant wind-up toy, she’d then plod back toward her sister, and Steve would have to pull her back again. I turned to a wide-eyed Dawn and said, “Welcome to Australia!” She was speechless.

Later, after the staff had arrived, we discovered the cause of our alligators’ conflict. Like a chicken, a female alligator will produce eggs even if she has had no contact with a male. Our girls had built nests in the exact same spot and then proceeded to defend their nests, and their unfertilized eggs, against each other. To this day we have to make sure the Fang Sisters don’t build a nest or, as a consequence, lay their eggs. Their bodies then simply reabsorb the eggs and all conflict is avoided.

Our zoo work is not just limited to our own facility. We work with zoos around the world consulting on wildlife husbandry techniques that we are particularly experienced with. And, of course, because of the specialized nature of our zoo we’re called upon quite often to help out with crocodiles. Whether a zoo is designing a new enclosure or just has some medical questions, we are always happy to lend our expertise. One of the most frequent requests for help comes when a crocodile needs to be moved.

One of the more challenging requests came from an aquarium in far North Queensland. The situation was not an unusual one; that of a saltwater crocodile that had outgrown his enclosure. Charlie had been hatched at a crocodile farm and, when he was about ten years old, instead of being turned into a pair of boots, he’d been lucky enough to find a home at the aquarium. For the past ten years he had lived there in a tidal pond. High besser block walls surrounded him on the rocky edge of the shoreline. Each day a piece of food was lowered over the wall on a line and tourists could experience his immense power as jaws snapped together over the food item. But the aquarium owners knew this was only a temporary home for Charlie. He was now over eleven feet long and weighed in at 705 pounds. He was growing too large for his pen and he just wasn’t happy anymore.

Charlie.

Charlie had never been able to swim in deep water or feel mud between his toes. He couldn’t see beyond the walls of his enclosure and he was getting bored with his feeding routine. Actually, “bored” probably doesn’t correctly describe his attitude. It was more like “angry.” The owners of the aquarium asked if we could take him. Finding a good home for an animal that can grow to over twenty feet long and weigh well over a ton isn’t easy. If no other zoo could be found to take Charlie he might have to be sent back to the farm. After many long discussions Steve and I agreed to take him, and preparations for his arrival at our park began.