World's Largest Corn Maze Leaves Some Calling 911 for Help
© Kevin Shields / Alamy
A corn maze in northern California has been attracting a lot of attention for something other than its status as the world's biggest. It's forced many maze goers to call 911 for help getting out.
Matt Cooley, owner of Cool Patch Pumpkins, says the calls happen almost every weekend. His corn maze was first certified as the world's largest by Guinness World Records back in 2007. By comparison, this year's maze is even 20 acres larger than that—60 acres in total. Add to that the fact that the maze stays open until 8pm, well after sundown, and it's no wonder people have had to resort to calling for emergency responders.
"At night time, if there's no moon out, you have no clue which direction is which," Cooley told CBC News. He said the average time people take to complete the maze is about two hours, but some have been out for four hours or more. That's often the last straw. (Yay, corn maze pun!)
Meanwhile, police in Dixon, California, the city outside of Sacramento where the maze is located, don't find the situation particularly amusing. "We don't laugh," Deputy Daryl Snedeker from the Solano County Sheriff's Department told CBS Sacramento. "Our dispatchers have a very serious job, and they take every call to 911 very serious." He stressed that calls from the maze can clog up their emergency response system.
For his part, Cooley is thinking about scaling the maze back down next year. "It's too much," he said. Though he also reminds people that getting lost is part of the fun, and no one has ever been stuck out their all night.
If there was ever a sentence to kick off a horror movie, that would be it.
[h/t Modern Farmer]
