The curious phrase "crocodile tears" might need redefining in the wake of the death of Australia's famed "Crocodile Hunter," Steve Irwin. Shakespeare coined the term, an allusion to the Romans' belief that crocodiles weep as they eat their prey, to describe an insincere display of grief, false tears.

But there was nothing false about the grief expressed by millions of people worldwide when they heard that the eccentric, risk-happy Aussie naturalist had finally run out of luck, stabbed in the heart on the Great Barrier Reef last Monday by a startled stingray. Even many people with long-standing reservations about Irwin's antics found themselves, like Australia's prime minister, feeling "quite shocked and distressed" at the news. Death, it appears, has lent the Crocodile Hunter a seriousness that eluded him in life.

Stephen Robert Irwin was all too easy to mock. With his broad Australian accent and trademark khaki shirt, shorts and hiking boots, which he wore even for a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush, he cut a figure so clownish it made many Australians cringe. On his hit television show for the Animal Planet network, his enthusiasm frequently came off as childlike to the point of simple-mindedness. After he dangled his month-old son near a crocodile he was feeding at his zoo in Queensland, the New York Daily News ran the headline: "Steve Irwin -- Australian for stupid." His catch-cries of "Crikey!" and "You little bewdy!" fueled dozens of parodies. It was difficult, often, to believe that anyone in the field of wildlife conservation could take this overgrown Peter Pan of the bush seriously.