George Ring, a hired man on the farm of William Smith, his father-in-law, near Alton, was riding a mowing machine one day last week, when one of the horses stepped in a yellow jacket’s nest. Instantly the irritable occupants of the nest came out in a swarm and stung the horses, which, frenzied with the pain of the poisonous stingers, ran away. Ring was thrown from his seat on the mower, and although he fortunately fell out of the way of the knives, he struck a spot where a patch of elder brush had been cut, at the end of the field, leaving stiff, sharp butts standing. When other men working in the field hurried to his aid they found him impaled on the stubbles, one having been forced through the fleshy part of his left thigh and one through his right shoulder. One ear was torn from his head, his lower jaw broken, and his body badly lacerated by the jagged elder stubble. The full extent of Ring’s injuries was not known nor could he be excused from his awful situation for ten minutes after the arrival of the men. A horde of yellow jackets which followed him as he was thrown from the machine, were stinging him fiercely on every bit of flesh exposed and had to be fought away and killed before the men could rescue the unfortunate Ring. He was carried to the farm house. It is thought that notwithstanding his injuries, he will recover.
The frenzied horses, crazed by the stinging of the yellow jackets, dashed madly across the field and in among a group of young chestnut trees. There the mowing machine was smashed to pieces. Along the edge of the field opposite the one where Ring was thrown and ten feet below it runs Cutler creek. The horses, freed from the machine, ran straight for that side of the field, and plunged down the steep bank into the creek.
The water is wide and deep at the spot, and, handicapped by their harness and hitched together, both horses were drowed. It is probable that they would have had to be killed at any rate, for they had been blinded by the stinging of the yellow jackets, and their bodies were swollen to an immense size by the poison.
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