Good news (we think?): Bees, not a bear, attacked NJ child

ROXBURY TOWNSHIP — It's a post that just screams out for more detail. Unfortunately, you're not going to get much more, at least today.

"We realize there is a lot of talk in town about a child being mauled by a bear, this was not the case," the Roxbury Township Police Department wrote on its Facebook page Saturday. "There was miscommunication and the child was stung by bees, not mauled by a bear."

Oh, good. But wait, what?

We weren't the only ones a bit thrown off:

Roxbury Township Police Spokesperson Jennifer Dillard said in a message left for New Jersey 101.5 that police first got a call about a bear attacking a child at 12:25 p.m. Six minutes later, they got an updated call that there was no bear, but a 20-month-old had been attacked by bees, she said.

Police checked out the situation to make sure everyone was safe, Dillard said. But she said she didn't believe the child was taken to the hospital.

It wasn't immediately clear from her message why the caller mistook the situation so substantially.

"I don't know what the dispatch call sounds like," she said.

"This is why we have to be in great physical condition," the police department wrote in the comments to its Facebook post. "We went from 0 to 100, mentally and physically when this call went out. Just relieved to arrive on scene and find bees."

Anthony Casale wrote in the comments he'd "assume serious language barrier or poor cell service" was to blame for the confusion, "because mauled by a bear and stung by a bee sound absolutely nothing remotely close to each other!"

"Then again, the year 2020 has been crazy, so if somebody called in a bear was smoking a cigarette drinking a beer while riding a unicycle, I'd buy it!" he wrote.

"Anthony Casale," the Roxbury Township Police Department replied, "we would too."

This story has been updated to reflect additional comment from Roxbury Township police.