Some things cannot be summarized, only reproduced in their original detail:
A swarm of about 30,000 bees attacked a North Texas couple as they exercised their miniature horses, stinging the animals so many times they died. Kristen Beauregard, 44, was stung about 200 times, and her boyfriend about 50 times, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Saturday. But the horses, Chip and Trump, were so covered in bees they shimmered. Neither could be saved. “They were chasing us down, they were following us,” Beauregard said of the incident Wednesday evening. “We swept up piles and piles of them…it was like a bad movie.”
Let us bear this tragedy in mind and display more compassion and mercy to the bees when it comes to colony collapse disorder than they have been to us and our tiniest horses.
“Let them die,” you say, bearing aloft your eensy pitchforks (so designed as to make the skewering of multiple honeybees at once both easy and convenient.
“But what of the plants?” others among you ask, and very wisely too. “What will we do without plants?”
“Plants will not bring back Chip and Trump,” the pitchforkers contest. “What have plants ever done for us?”
And the others take a moment to consider. Plants have been coasting for generations, they are forced to admit. Plants lack initiative and that certain pep that make putting up with something worthwhile.
“Plants take light and make food of it,” a pitchforker says. “Is that witchcraft?” No answer.
“I own a large horse,” one woman cries out. “Will the bees be fooled by her size, or will they come for her too?”
“Let us make the bees our king,” a nervous-looking man says. “We cannot hope to fight them, not without our horses. Let us gracefully accept the inevitable, and hope that some of us will be spared.”
“That man is clearly bees in disguise,” his neighbor shouts. “He is bees! Fork him!”
“If the bees can kill a small horse,” someone says, “what else can they kill?”
So covered in bees that they shimmered.
Tags: bees, colony collapse disorder, plants are useless coasters, RIP chip and trump
Your weapons are useless against them….
RIP chip and trump *bows head sadly*
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Is this an okay place to share my morning horror? Just sitting around, reading the Billfold on my aging Macbook, and a CENTIPEDE crawled out of it. A CENTIPEDE.
see above comment
Genuinely made this face, like this is exactly what my face looked like: D:
I was so horrified my nose disappeared.
This. is. my. nightmare. From where, the usb port? and did you scream and smash it even though it was on your keyboard so you smashed your computer too, ruining it, but it was totally worth killing that monster right? I have so many questions. I hate centipedes. HUGE ones would crawl out of the chimney of the rural midwest house I grew up in.
Okay yeah, I’m still like, flailing my hands around and throwing up in my mouth. I also hate centipedes! I grew up in more of a massive wolf spider clime, and only experienced centipedes in my shitty Ottawa apartments when I was at uni, so I am so horrified by them. You know those old white Macbooks? Mine is from 2007. It crawled out of the fan at the back, behind the keyboard. I started moaning and sputtering and yelling for my husband, and he was all like “if you don’t like something on the internet, just look at another page” because I couldn’t even say what was wrong. By the time he finally came over, it had mainly gone back in, so he used compressed air to blow it out and killed it. I rolled on the floor in hysterics.
I never thought a centipede could fit in a macbook, and I am currently very grateful for my macbook pro’s very small fan opening (one could argue TOO small, but I’ll take sometimes-overheating laptop over centipedes thankyou).
Haha, the body of mine is all smashed up and full of holes – I’d imagine that’s more the problem. Be careful with your things!
“if you don’t like something on the internet, just look at another page” hahaha wise words. I think what makes centipedes so startlingly creepy-scary is how fast and unpredictable those fuckers are. They don’t crawl, they scamper. I am sorry to hear about this traumatic event you’ve experienced.
And they look like something from a horror movie. You have to do a double take, and by the time you realize what you’re looking at, you’ve been staring at a centipede.
Husband was so blase. He won’t be when he is taking the entire stupid computer apart tonight to clean it/kill bugs.
I bet if you look up close at a centipede you realize it’s like “The Human Centipede,” but made up of tortured ants.
This happens to me so often. My husband comes in to see me with tears in my eyes, and says, “You watched that sad puppy commercial again, didn’t you?”
This is why Apple’s earnings are down.
“if you don’t like something on the internet, just look at another page”
I’m sorry but this is making me laugh so hard right now, that is something Mr Iceberg would say too.
NOOOOO I HAVE THE SAME MACBOOK MODEL IS IT FULL OF CENTIPEDES
Oh no! It probably isn’t! Is yours full of actual small holes? Did you spill a huge glass of wine into it three years ago and never properly clean it up? Do you regularly leave it on the ground under the couch? I bet (hope) yours is okay, because my mind is still full of bugs crawling out of it. I mean, I’ve had it in my BED. By my FACE.
Ok no BUT
what if centipedes have discovered a way to use translocational beaming through macbooks (old AND new models)? WHAT IF. What if one is just like. IN THERE. I didn’t even know they could FIT in there. Aaaauugggghhhh
Those holes by the base of the screen, where it closes – that’s where it came out. I’m not even untidy – I just got an A+ on my apartment inspection! I don’t know where it came from; I have never seen a centipede in my entire place. MAYBE IT BEAMED OVER FROM YOURS!?
YOU GUYS. I am paranoid enough already, and now I am going to be looking for goddamn centipedes!!!
I hate all bees. I honestly don’t care about your “theories” that their ultimate demise will bring about some kind of environmental nuclear winter. Fuck the bees.
Poor horsies and poor bees 🙁
Exactly. One day I fear they’ll realize that we are the true enemy of the planet, and rise up against us with flailing hooves/piecing stingers.
This woman I went to school with had a long, semi-plausible story about a vicious mini-horse that was always attacking people. He was so vicious that she made the owners promise that they would never sell him or give him away, but then they DID ANYWAY, and that mini-horse, according to this woman, went on to RIP A LITTLE BOY’S ARM OFF. Chip and Trump: what were they hiding???
(This story might be BS. This is the same woman who would do things like come up on me while I was mixing up cake batter and start reading nutrition information off of ingredient labels. “Wowww….100% calories from fat!” “It’s cooking oil!” I felt she lacked gravitas.)
I love everything about this comment.
“Lacked gravitas.”
My horse once kicked an un-gelded mini-horse who ran at him. The mini was in the air for several feet before hitting the ground and rolling. He was fine, but I had already mentally prepared to say “what do I owe you for that little hairy thing?”
I know ponies, at least, can be real assholes sometimes. The stable I used to ride at had ponies you could rent for parties and shit, and the ponies were so high-strung and bitey that they would drug the ponies before sending them out to interact with children. (THIS IS A HORRIBLE PRACTICE I KNOW AND IT WOULD MAKE ME BITEY TOO.)
Didn’t anyone else see “My Girl” repeatedly throughout the 90’s? Bee’s kill our sensitive childhood friends! They are a bridge to adulthood. They are an evil necessity.
I REALLY don’t like bees though.
Oh my god the birds and the bees THE BEES ARE TAKING YOUR INNOCENCE HE CAN’T SEE WITHOUT HIS GLASSES
So many childhood tears were shed. THOMAS JAY! SOB.
But…but….these are evil bees though. Evil hybridized crazy killer bees. They shouldn’t be lumped in with our gentle, friendly European honeybees, who are just out there trying to keep their head down and get along and pollinate all our foods.
That’s just Phase One. In Phase Two, they hide just under things you want to rest your hand on, then sting you.
Guys, bees are one of the benign members of the insect world, and at least they give us honey. Save your hatred for all forms of roaches and mosquitoes, which are vile.
Honey is completely overrated. When people say they like honey, they mean they like the idea of someone in a green meadow bringing them a fresh slice of homemade bread, with butter and just-gathered dark honey spread on it, which then magically doesn’t make you sticky. It’s literally never happened.
!!!!
GOOD DAY, SIR!
note: I may have been obsessed with this chicken recipe lately since it reminds me of my mother’s chicken. I’m basically admitting that I’ve been obsessed with burnt sugar chicken though.
I thought honey was overrated until I tasted other honeys besides the standard clover honey. Clover honey tastes kind of pukey, but other kinds are wonderful. Especially raw honey.
I think we just found Nicole’s hummus. Two things that will never grace the Toast of this site.
Or yellowjackets. Pointless, angry, and will happily sting you multiple times. I had one crawl down my shirt at summer camp in my pubescent-but-pre-bra years and sting me twice, and other attack me for watering my neighbor’s lawn. Maybe it was revenge for the time I gleefully drowned one in the juice from my container of fruit salad at day camp.
My girlfriend and I got into geocaching one summer; it was going very well, we were hunting down all the caches. Then one particularly sadistic cacher led us into a thorny bush and yellow jacket nest. I’ve never felt more pain than in that sting, and I’ve never given up on something so quickly.
I am allergic to bees and wasps. Or at least, I think I am. My mother is, but I haven’t been stung since I was five or six years old and while I vaugely remember my parents freaking out I don’t think it was severe enough for an epi-pen or something.
But still, I am semi-convinced that if I am stung even once I will die.
Which means that when the wasps nest set up home in our old chimney, I thought my response of closing the living room door, putting signs on it saying ‘wasp’ and not entering again until my husband had filled the chimney with poison and boarded it up was a perfectly good response.
There were 12 WASPS IN THE LIVING ROOM
12.
Sounds like a good solution to me! Then again, when I saw a centipede in my apartment in France, I immediately called my mother in the U.S. She reasonably asked what I wanted her to do, so I hung up and curled up in my chair until it skittered back to its dark lair.
Once when there was a wasp in the bathroom I seriously considered peeing in the sink.
Other bugs don’t bother me so much, apart from cockroaches (uuuugh), earwigs (I found half of one in my sandwich once. It was still wriggling. Coincidentally, since then I’ve hated sandwiches) and SPIDERS OH GOD SPIDERS NO NO NO NO NO
It is a great joy to me that my cats will kill and eat spiders.
Maybe it’s just me, but these chimneys are the worst. Who planned these? England, you failed. We had a bird get caught in ours a few months ago, and it’s an old electric one so we couldn’t open it. I heard that bird in there for days. Still haunts me.
What happened is we had an electric fire in, but about two months before we moved out, the boiler went and they tore out the fire to replace it.
And then didn’t fill in the hole in the unusued chimney, leaving a gaping hole in our living room.
Pigeons had always lived in that chimney, but they moved out when the wasps moved in.
(The answer to your question is that anything built before electric or gas boilers had big huge chimneys so that a fire could both warm the whole house and not fill your rooms with suffocating smoke. When these houses were changed over to boilers, instead of properly filling the chimneys in which takes work, most people just stuck an electric fire in the old grate and called it a day)
My friend Aurora found a wasp’s nest in her horse trailer come the spring, and I watched her reach in, twist it off, and hurl it over a fence into a field. I basically needed to take a Xanax and go lie down.
I need a xanax after reading that! I would take a walk outside to calm down, but outside – bees. Hiding under my desk instead.
Using the outdoor shower at my grandpa’s house after a day at the beach is the most relaxing/best thing ever, except for that time 2 months ago when, as soon as I had a head full of shampoo, I found out that there was freaking wasps’ nest hidden in a corner, and also the gardeners had arrived, so I could not run out of the shower, naked and screaming.
Nope. I would have bolted- full sprint with my naked ass for everyone to see.
Also, here in GA there are GIANT bees they are like 2 inches long, almost cicada sized. They don’t appear to have stingers or at least be interested in humans at all, I think they are bumblebees, but when we first saw them, being from Australia, aka Land Of Tiny Things That Kill You, I was very worried.
They’re probably cicada killers, which are docile. The males can’t sting at all, and the females will only sting if you aggressively fuck with them.
I live in SC…the giant bees are terrifying! I think you’re right, that they don’t sting, but there are a few that hang around my carport and sometimes I decide “well i’ll just go to the store later”, rather than having to go near them to get to my car.
Sorry, not an interesting story, just wanted to affirm the existence/worry of the giant bees
Those are probably just wood bees! They’re harmless but they will bore holes in any untreated/unpainted wood.
As a native Georgian and dedicated fearer of flying things with pointy bits I’m all too familiar with those things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_bee is what you’re looking at. They’re big but they’re actually not that horrifying.
Those redish wasps though. THOSE make my heart stop.
That’s the guy!
COLLECTOR SWARM!!!!*
*maybe 5 ppl will know what I’m talking about here.
“He is bees!” reminded me of this. “1 in 10 people are actually vinyl suits full of snakes.”
Is anyone else’s skin just *crawling* after reading this article + comment thread? I feel like the only thing that will make me feel better is to go shower and use my scrubby gloves over every inch of skin and change my clothes and possibly burn the ones I’m wearing, but what if there are bees/wasps/spiders/etc in the shower? OR IN MY LAUNDRY?
Maybe I’ll just sit in the very middle of my living room and regularly rotate to make sure the bugs aren’t approaching from behind my back. Forever.
…one time I was taking a shower and I started scrubbing with my mesh scrubber sponge thing, and an earwig crawled out. (Sorry! sorrysorrysorry)
I didn’t know it was possible for me to laugh while making a D: face. Oh my god.
THAT HAPPENED TO ME ONCE D:
I’m with the guy willing to submit to the Bee King. This summer has broken me. Sure, mayflies in the kitchen, just hang out wherever. Hi, yellow jacket in my office, go ahead and make a nest in the ceiling beam. Cool, little gnat things in the bathroom, sitting on my makeup brushes is just the best.
I can’t fight them, I can only hope to be dead before they start devouring me.
Perhaps Bee King Man is actually Nicolas Cage.
I have had an annual fight with stinging flying insects since I’ve moved out here 8 years ago. Most especially wasps. They have firmly ensconced themselves into my roommates 3 broken cars in the Armageddon that is our driveway, making it difficult to cut grass or even get out to the cars without the fear of being stung.
I feel badly for everyone/thing in this story, though.
I had a dream last night that I had a really big pimple, so I squeezed it, and there was something hard and brown inside. I squeezed harder and it was a huge, hard woody thing, like a nut. When it finally popped out it was the size of a jelly bean, and it left a gaping hole in my face. I cracked the nut open and a live ant crawled out.
Years ago I had a similar dream that I squeezed a pimple and a worm came out. APPARENTLY THIS IS A THING WITH ME WHAT DOES IT MEEEEEAN? I don’t want any more.
a friend who works in a botanical garden once calmly told me that earlier in the day she had had to relocate a swarm(?) of bees from the garden before they made a hive. Apparently the way you do that is by using your HANDS to herd/scoop them into a bucket and then taking them elsewhere.
YOUR HANDS
ugh
I found it! I think he was actually a good dude. He felt proud and maternal. I guess I can understand that, but…it was just so weird.
This happens to me so often. My husband comes in to see me with tears in my eyes, and says, "You watched that sad puppy commercial again, didn't you?"
YOU GUYS. I am paranoid enough already, and now I am going to be looking for goddamn centipedes!!!
So many childhood tears were shed. THOMAS JAY! SOB.
Maybe it's just me, but these chimneys are the worst. Who planned these? England, you failed. We had a bird get caught in ours a few months ago, and it's an old electric one so we couldn't open it. I heard that bird in there for days. Still haunts me.
Nope. I would have bolted- full sprint with my naked ass for everyone to see.
Perhaps Bee King Man is actually Nicolas Cage.
My girlfriend and I got into geocaching one summer; it was going very well, we were hunting down all the caches. Then one particularly sadistic cacher led us into a thorny bush and yellow jacket nest. I've never felt more pain than in that sting, and I've never given up on something so quickly.