Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Wet...

...at least that's what some misguided, violence-prone fans of the late naturalist Steve Irwin seem to think. In response to Irwin's death, at the hands of or rather the tail spine of a stingray, several stingrays have been found dead and mutilated on Australia's East Coast.

Now, this sort of thing happens more often in the animal kingdom than most would care to admit. It's a well-known rumour that Lassie, after being viciously bitten by Cheetah the chimp in Tarzan vs. Lassie II, The Fleas, had a hit placed on Cheetah. Cheetah only escaped death by sending a note of heartfelt apology to Lassie, accompanied by 20 pounds of choice fillet steak.

Also, there are very sketchy reports that Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom's Jim Fowler had a yak disemboweled for daring to slobber on Marlon Perkins' new Italian boots.

Not surprisingly, many Aussie stingrays are confused, afraid, and being relatively low on the old IQ scale, nearly incomprehensible. I spoke to one briefly using a translator, Day of the Dolphin's Fa:

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Earl: What has been the response in the stingray community to these awful and malicious attacks?

Fa: Fa!!! Whee!!! Ray!!! Ta!!! Kee!!! Pa!!! Ta!!!!

Stingray: (gurgling noises)

Fa: Ga!!! Gee!!! Ha!!! Wee!!! Sa!!!

Earl: Won't violence begat more violence though? ...And can we really expect stingrays to develop thermonuclear weapons?

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As you can see, there is great frustration in the stingray world and in the small but busy community of dolphin translators. Steve Irwin himself would be distraught to find out that animals were being killed in his name for purposes not related to steak products. Hopefully, tensions will subside and the stingrays will not get their hands on weapons-grade uranium, because they'd probably blow themselves all up, stupid, slick little buggers that they are.