Summer has started the annual bug population explosion. We can now enjoy the outdoors along with the buzzilion insects which are massing themselves into irritating hordes, waiting for people to come outside with their platters of hamburgers and bowls of potato salad.

"Meat bees" were invented to keep people from completely enjoying summer patio meals. They look cleaner, neater and have sportier styling than houseflies, but they are armed and dangerous. It is inadvisable to ingest one with your hamburger, lest a sting be delivered in an area of the alimentary canal where it is impossible to apply anti-itch cream.

Wasps like meat bees can be intimidating, but the most maddening insect is still the common housefly, which never should have been named "housefly" because it doesn't belong in houses. It should have been named the "outdoor insect which-is-never-permitted-to-enter-the-house fly".

With swatter in hand, you can stalk a fly which has been tirelessly patrolling your home for hours. Finally, it lands on the antique crystal bud vase your Great Aunt Annaretta gave as a wedding gift. If you had superman vision, you would see that the fly smiles broadly as he defiantly leaves a tiny black deposit. He somehow knows that, as focused as you are on dealing him a deadly blow, you are not willing to destroy the bud vase or forego the remote chance of receiving a substantial inheritance from Great Aunt Anaretta who expects to see it displayed prominently each time she visits.

Theoretically, it is impossible to sneak up on a fly because it's multiplex eye sees hundreds of images of you coming at him with a swatter from every conceivable angle. So how does he find a landing spot on the crystal vase you ask?

Don't ask. Accept the fact that years of natural selection have evolved a fly's genetic ability to detect priceless fragile antique items and other favorable landing zones made of materials which you would hate to see destroyed by a swat or stained by a smashed fly.

A housefly in the house will not land on anything that people do not care about. It will not land on the cardboard carton from your ceiling fan replacement light globe which has been sitting in the corner of the room for months. It will, however, land on the light globe, itself, which looks exactly like the picture on the carton.

It will not land on indestructible items like a 200 pound cast iron replica of an English Bulldog. It WILL land on a ceramic bulldog. It will also land on things that will attack you when swatted, like a live bulldog.

It will not land on a folding metal chair you bought at a yard sale for 35 cents. It will land on any furniture in a style with the same name as a historical European monarch like Queen Anne or Louis XIV. ( I always thought it odd that so many royal personages were named for furniture styles. )

People have the mistaken idea that insects, because they have tiny heads, have relatively little brain. However people, who have relatively large heads and brains have been harassed and outwitted by bugs for centuries. And the bugs are evolving faster than we are. This is technically known as "bugalution".

In the olden days we had bees and ants for instance, but now we have killer bees and fire ants which are immune and impervious to normal household pest control such as flash bang grenades, beanbag bazookas, shoe bombs and Russian sleeping gas.

People have been plagued by the pesky and pervasive pantry moths from the time of the invention of the pantry. The current fear is, that these fragile yet omnipresent creatures which now have access to increasing quantities of nutritionally intensified products, may mutate into Killer Pantry Moths or the Africanized Fire Pantry Moths which eat sofa beds and major appliances.

Of course there are beneficial insects. Probably the all time favorite is the ladybird beetle or ladybug which was the inspiration for small German autos. This was a positive example of bugalution, because VW's are seldom allowed inside the house and are not a threat to crystal bud vases.