Being a journalist on the front lines can be a dangerous job. Few of us can hold a candle to the war corrospondents of the world (and their photogs behind the lens!)… but those of us who don’t go to war have our fair share of occupational hazzards as well. Don’t believe me? Just drop in on the Schmuck Alert! website, where you can find an endless array of photog dangers.

But those of us who have been “In The Biz” for a while have learned to stay on our toes. There are certain stories that require an extra layer of caution and awareness to make sure we don’t end up… well… on the Schmuck Alert! victims list. They are generally few and far between, but they are out there.

Now on the “Caution-O-Meter”, your run-of-the-mill grass fire is not something that raises red flags. They happen all the time, usually beside a freeway from a careless cigarette or some guy who hit a rock with his lawnmower. It’s what we call in “The Biz”… well… a common grass fire. And that’s where I was shipped off to yesterday.

So I drove my live truck along a gravel backroad into the boonies, singing along to a classic Beastie Boys album (Licence to Ill, a necessity to any serious photog), ready to phone this one in. But as I rounded the corner towards the flashing lights, I realized something didn’t seem right. Usually at grass fires, there are two things you’ll see: grass and fires. This one had a bunch of white boxes stacked around the area. What is this about?

Turns out this fire, which consumed all of one acre, happened next some sort of bee farm (bee-ery?). Well, this certainly changes things!

So, under the threat of attack, I did what any good war corrospondent would do… I hit reverse and backed right the hell down that gravel road.

After a quick re-grouping, I designed a new strategey. I grabbed my camera, drove back out there, and shot everything through the windows of the live truck. Am I a coward? Some may call me that… especially given the firefighters battling that inferno among those stinging bastards….

But hey, I’m alergic to bee stings (at least I probably am…), so I wasn’t about to take any chances! And besides, bee stings hurt! Like, really bad! So they can settle for shakey video from inside the truck. If they don’t like it, they can come back out here and do it themselves.

That being said, I suppose the bottom line here is that I won’t be headed to Lybia any time soon. Because seriously… the bees are big over there.