ONTARIO, CA (RNN/KCAL/KCBS/CNN) – Imagine Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” only instead of crazed seagulls attacking Tippi Hedren, it’s vicious bees, stingers up and bearing down on a helpless senior woman only wanting to walk her little dog in peace.
A 70-year-old California woman was walking her dog through a Huntington Beach park, a place she’s been to hundreds of times before.
She’s no stranger to nature. But a swarm of bees struck out of nowhere, stinging, relentless, terrifying.
“I’ve seen coyotes, possums, squirrels, hawks,” Mary Ann Speicher said. “I have never seen even regular bees that I remember. These were unbelievable.”
These were no regular bees. They were on the attack. She tried to walk away, but more than 100 followed her, getting in her hair, her nose, her ears.
“I started screaming for help,” she said. She held a plastic bag in her hand and used it as a pitiful weapon against the onslaught, hoping to crush them against her own skull.
And still they came.
When firefighters arrived, the bees attacked them. Even grizzled veterans were astonished at the ferocity of the raging drones.
“It looked like they were this big,” said engineer Mike Farr, circling his thumb and forefinger in what would have been an “OK” sign in a situation of less severity.
“And they just wouldn’t stop coming at you,” he said, yet unbelieving.
The firefighters deployed their last, best and only weapon: The fire hose.
Once unfurled, they trained foam upon the relentless marauders and hurled them back to the dark place from which they'd come.
Ann said she’d never been so happy to be drenched with foam.
“It was welcome,” she said, still shaken by her brush with the violence of raw nature. “It was a welcome relief.”
She and her dog are now recovering at her home. The bee stings are just kind of itchy now, and they are both up and around. She says they’ll return to their favorite park. Some day.
But she will not come unprepared for the worst the killer bees have to offer.
“I’m going to get a big can of bug spray the next time …” She said. “And I’m going to fight back.”
But the questions linger. Was it caused by global warming? Were they striking back after years of colony collapse disorder, because of carelessly applied industrial pesticides decimating their ranks?
A dark secret. One we may never know.
Copyright 2017 RNN, KCAL/KCBS via CNN. All rights reserved.
