6 Nightmare Animal Attacks Starring Everyday Creatures

6 A Guy Was Killed After Bees Stung Him 1,000 Times And Pursued Him In A High-Speed Chase

Back in 2016, a guy named Alex Bestler was hiking through the beautiful Usery Mountain Park, not far outside of Phoenix, Arizona, when he suddenly stumbled into a horror movie. Completely unprovoked, a massive swarm of bees attacked, covering Bestler from head-to-toe and stinging relentlessly. A friend managed to run ahead and escape by hiding in a bathroom, but when the rangers arrived they found Bestler on the ground, “still covered by bees,” who drove back multiple attempts to reach him. A team of cops and firefighters were finally able to drag Bestler on the back of an ATV and zoom away, ”still covered with bees, and with a swarm pursuing” until they finally shook them off and made it to an ambulance. Bestler was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital, having suffered well over a thousand bee stings. 

This wasn’t even a particularly freak occurrence in the Southwest. Just two months earlier, a guy in Texas died after being stung at least 200 times while trying to escape on his tractor. The year before, three people were hospitalized after a massive bee swarm besieged a neighborhood in Gilbert, Arizona. Among the injured was a firefighter stung over 40 times after his protective anti-bee hood somehow became filled with bees. And a year before that, a landscaper in Douglas, Arizona died after being attacked by a swarm estimated at 800,000 bees. That’s a goddamn kaiju of bees. Their hive alone covered 24 square feet, making it significantly larger than most New York apartments. 

Possibly the most notorious incident was the 1998 Bisbee Bee Battle, when a gigantic swarm of bees attacked the town of Bisbee, Arizona. Residents almost crashed into each other in the frantic rush to escape, leaving discarded shoes and bags scattered across the street, while the bees were reportedly so enraged they were observed stinging telephone poles and car tires. There were Viking raids that did less damage. 

The Bisbee attack, and many (not all) of the other incidents, have been blamed on Africanized or “killer” bees. These bees all descend from 26 East African queen bees accidentally released from a Brazilian research station by an inexperienced beekeeper in 1957. The Queens formed a new hybrid strain by breeding with local bees, which rapidly spread across the Americas, reaching the American Southwest in the 1990s. While not individually deadlier than other bees, the Africanized bees are much more aggressive. As one expert put it, “they hate any movement, any noise, any vibration. They hate everything.”

5 A Venomous Spider Bit A Guy On The Penis (Twice)

There are many terrible animal-based sentences you could utter. For example, there’s “cave bats stole my anti-incontinence medication” or “that duck has a gun.” But the absolute prize has to go to a man known only as Jordan, who can, in all truthfulness, start a story with “So the second time a spider bit my penis…”

The incidents happened on a construction site in Australia, because of course they did. Jordan, who inexplicably chose not to release his full name, was in the middle of a hard day’s work when he sat down on the site’s portable toilet for a quick bowel movement. This enraged the venomous redback spider hiding inside the toilet bowl, which proceeded to launch itself fangs-first at the nearest target. Now, redback bites can cause intense pain to the point of vomiting, and that’s when the spider isn’t clamped to your dong, so the poor guy had to be rushed straight to hospital. The incident was considered so wild that it made international news. And then, five months later, the whole thing happened again. 

According to Jordan, who clearly once beat Anansi at poker, he was working on the same construction site, but had been understandably reluctant to use the port-a-potty since the groin-spider attack. But the “toilets got cleaned that day and I thought it was my opportunity to go use one. Had a look under both seats and then I sat down,” at which point a redback lunged out and bit his penis again. Which is basically the equivalent of that Looney Tunes joke where someone carefully looks both ways down a completely empty road, then steps out and immediately gets obliterated by a truck. 

This definitely happened -- the BBC actually went out and verified it. But that still leaves just so many unanswered questions. Where did the spider come from? Was this the same redback? And most importantly, why was this only happening to Jordan? Is his dong somehow irresistible to spiders, or was everybody else at the construction site just in desperate need of dietary fiber? Either way, take a moment to feel sorry for Jordan, who probably has such a fear of toilets he’ll end up as history’s first voluntary colostomy patient. Although as an Australian, he might be tough enough to just shrug it off. After all, we’re talking about a country that once had a hit song about this exact situation. 

4 New Delhi’s Gangs Of Feral Monkeys Assassinated The Deputy Mayor

Back in 2007, the citizens of New Delhi woke up to some terrible news: The deputy mayor had been treacherously pushed off a balcony to his death. But this wasn’t some House Of Cards-style intrigue. Instead, the politician had become the latest victim of a major problem in the city when a gang of aggressive rhesus macaque monkeys attacked him on his balcony, sending him plummeting to his death while trying to escape.

There are an estimated 30,000 rhesus macaques living in New Delhi, where people are reluctant to harm them due to their association with the god Hanuman. But with their population booming, the red-faced monkeys are rapidly becoming a problem, with gangs breaking into homes and even cars to steal food and alcohol. They’ve also been known to attack people when angered, with young children especially at risk. Even the Indian government isn’t free of the menace, with politicians forced to keep their windows tightly shut to avoid mischievous monkeys climbing in and tearing up papers. 

To combat the macaques, New Delhi deployed elite squads of anti-monkey monkeys. Specifically, they used langurs, a larger species of monkey known to terrify their smaller cousins. The city used to employ 30 “langur men,” who zoomed around the city with trained langurs, frightening macaques away from busy areas. That plan hit a road bump in 2012, when the environment ministry pointed out that langurs were a protected species and it had been illegal to own them since 1972. The city was forced to cancel its contracts with the langur men, who responded by going underground, smuggling illegal monkeys around the city to scare off armies of wild macaques. 

Meanwhile, the government is trying to replace their langur bouncers by hiring a team of 40 “ape-repellers.” These are guys who squeal like langurs in an attempt to scare away macaques. And we don’t know about you, but everyone here is completely furious that we don’t live in a country where “does a pretty good monkey impression” is a viable career path. 

3 A Guard Swan Murdered Its Own Boss

Swans are stunningly majestic birds that hate you personally, and also everyone else in general. Which is why a Chicago company called Knox Swan & Dog had the idea to rent them out to local developments looking to keep away geese, which is kind of like trying to keep away coyotes by getting a dragon. And that had tragic consequences when a company employee was drowned by the very swan he was supposed to be looking after. Anthony Hensley had paddled a kayak out into a pond at a condo development to check on the guard swans. Unfortunately, he apparently did one of the several million things that can enrage a swan, as it suddenly attacked, knocking him out of the canoe.

Hensley tried to swim to safety, but that’s a lot harder than it sounds when there’s an enraged swan attacking you. Witnesses reported that it continued to “harass” Hensley as he struggled to reach the shore, before ultimately slipping beneath the surface of the 50-foot deep pond. For all that we’ve joked about their deadly reputation, lethal swan attacks are extremely uncommon (the popular factoid that a swan can break your arm with its wings is basically an old wives tale), making us suspect that this particular swan was just extremely murderous. 

The Chicago Blood Swan does have one challenger for the title of most birderous murd. Castle Pond in Pembroke, Wales, is home to a swan dubbed “Mr. Nasty,” who is believed to have killed at least 20 other swans in under a year. The number would have been higher if not for the efforts of a local businessman, who managed to rescue 14 of the intended victims. Local conservationists said that most of the birds were pushed into Castle Pond by other swans, who forced them over a sluice gate from an adjoining pond. Since it was moulting season, the swans were unable to fly, leaving them trapped in the death lake, where Mr. Nasty and his mate lived alone. They were quickly hunted down and killed. 

So swans were repeatedly throwing other swans to their deaths in a special murder pond, like Jabba dropping people to the Rancor. The hell kind of society are these birds running? To make things weirder, Castle Pond had previously been home to a swan called Hannibal, who was doing exactly the same thing, killing 15 swans in under seven months. Local bird-watchers eventually got permission to remove Hannibal, but then Mr. Nasty showed up and started right back up with the killing spree. Is this pond cursed? In any case, this all goes back to the main point, which is that swans are terrifying and you should stay away from them. 

2 Let's Talk About Pigs For A Minute …

If you’ve ever seen any crime movie ever, you’ll know that pigs will eat anything -- even human bodies. But if you’re a pig farmer, the body you end up disposing of might be your own. Seriously, there are more cases of farmers being devoured by their own pigs than you could count on the fingers of one pig’s digestive tract. Just this year, a farmer in Poland was assumed eaten after bone fragments were found in his pig farm. In Oregon, a farmer named Terry Garner went out to feed his pigs and was never seen again. His fate was identified after his dentures and various body parts were found scattered around his pig pen. 

A particularly terrifying story comes from Norfolk, England’s number one location for disturbing stories. Apparently, a local farmer was out feeding pigs when he was knocked over by a large sow, which then attacked him as soon as he hit the ground. Seeing the attack, every other pig in the pen charged to join in the attack. Which, given that pigs can easily weigh over 300 pounds, does not sound like a fun situation. The guy just about managed to crawl to safety and was rushed to hospital, where he made a full recovery. He presumably now spends a lot of time wondering whether the attack was spontaneous, or a planned ambush in response to poor conditions, like if Chicken Run had been directed by Eli Roth. 

Incidentally, there is one farm animal that kills way more people a year than pigs, and it’s cows. Not just the enraged bulls you might be picturing, but actual female cows too. That’s because when bulls attack people, they tend to be solo, while cows will charge in a herd, trampling the threat to death like a farm-based Mufasa. So remember kids: Teamwork makes the dream work. 

1 A Goat Gored A Guy To Death, Then Defended The Body For Almost An Hour

Living thousands of feet above sea level and able to climb almost vertical cliffs, the nimble mountain goat is unquestionably the GOAT of goats. And while they can be aggressive in protecting their young, mountain goat attacks on humans remain extremely rare. Which was why a group of hikers in Olympic National Park weren’t too panicked when they came across an aggressive ram in 2010. The most experienced hiker, a beloved local nurse and musician named Robert Boardman, urged his companions to move away down the trail while he hung back to shoo the goat away from the group. Unfortunately, this was no ordinary goat. This goat was out for blood. 

Park rangers later said they had been tracking the ram, known as Klahhane Billy, for at least four years after receiving numerous complaints about unusually aggressive behavior. The goat was known for charging at people, and would even follow them ominously along the trail. On at least one occasion, rangers were forced to drive the 370-pound goat away by blasting it with nonlethal bean bag rounds. On another, he chased a terrified hiker down six switchbacks. Which kind of sounds like it should have been soundtracked by Yakety-Sax, except that there’s nothing funny about what happened next. 

During that final incident in 2010, the goat lunged forward and fatally gored Boardman with its horns. But its reign of terror didn’t end there. It proceeded to stand over Boardman’s body for almost an hour, driving off all attempts to help him, even as other hikers and rangers arrived on the scene. Throwing rocks and yelling proved futile, and the goat was ultimately only scared away after a quick-thinking park employee suggested waving a reflective silver space blanket at it. 

None of this was exactly standard goat behavior. The park called it “extremely strange and unusual,” and nobody’s been able to find another case of a mountain goat killing a human. Klahhane Billy was later shot, hopefully with a silver bullet, and tested for any diseases that could explain the attack. But the tests found nothing conclusive. It seems that this one park was just home to the world’s angriest goat. And there’s probably a good lesson in that: No matter what the statistics say, exercise caution in dealing with any wild animals. Because you never know when you’re about to come across the Klahhane Billy of chipmunks. 

Top image: Dmitry Demkin/Shutterstock