There’s trouble right here in Beeville, with a capital “T,” and that rhymes with “B,” and that stands for “bees.” Which, you know, would seem pretty obvious considering the name of the town and the county and that it’s located square in the middle of Bee County, Texas. You think maybe the town’s founders were trying to tell us something here?
Still, there aren’t very many ways to mentally and emotionally prepare for a massive swarm of bees coming after your family, which Richard Cantu of Beeville found out the hard way on Friday morning. According to local news station KIII, he was outside on their property clearing brush with a tractor when hundreds of the little striped monsters descended on him, his father, and his son faster than you can say “Oprah’s Favorite Things.”
Fifteen firefighters and nine police officers rushed to the scene to help, as the eldest Cantu suffers from bee allergies and needed to be taken to the hospital. He’s fine now, although he’s probably been traumatized from the beedemic.
“My dad said turn on the garden hose, and they were all over my face,” Richard told reporters. “I couldn’t find the garden hose because I mean, I just took my glasses off and I couldn’t see and we finally got it, and that’s when I called 911. They were too out of control. There was just too many of them.”
Beeville Police Sergeant Greg Baron called it the “largest bee swarm [he] has ever seen, with the most injuries,” which includes not only the Cantus but a few animals on their property. “There’s a couple dogs, there’s even a cow back there, all of them seem to be in a pretty good amount of pain,” he said.
We can only imagine that somewhere there’s probably an elderly Texan psychic clutching at her forehead, muttering about an ancient and terrible prophecy foretelling how Richard Cantu has been marked for greatness by the very beasts he must one day slay for the good of mankind. That, or maybe there’s just a really big hive near their house. It could go either way.
(via NY Daily News, image via Umberto Salvagnin)
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