Not the bees! My eyes! My eyes!

In the summertime, I like to grill outside. I'm not a gas griller. I use charcoal and an old Weber, so it takes me a few minutes to get things going, and I have time to sit on the deck and contemplate while my briquettes are burning. A couple summers ago while engaging in wistful contemplation, I noticed what I would call an unusual number of bees flying around my head and neck area -- all around the deck, actually. So I did some keen observation and saw, much to my alarm, that bees were coming and going from a small hole in the ground next to my well window. I didn't appreciate that. I have kids and didn't want them running into a stream of bees while they were minding their own business, rolling in the grass, or jumping up and down and yelling for no good reason (my son does this). So I went into the garage and got my can of Raid and sprayed the bee tunnel. Problem solved. Not so fast there, Steve. The next night I noticed what I would characterize as more bees. I got my can of Raid and emptied it into the hole. I'm not proud to admit I might have uttered "Die, bees! Die!" while I spritzed their honey hotel. The bees did not die. In fact, they seemed to flourish on vaporized poison. Fast forward two days. A very bee-y evening. Most of the little worker bees were out gathering nectar, or what have you, and Hurricane Steve decided to destroy their beetropolis. I stuck a garden hose into Bee Hollow and let her rip. I cooked some cheeseburgers and felt very satisfied with my twilight sneak attack. Then the bees came home from work. They were not happy. They saw a guy in a tank top with a spatula in his hand (me) and decided he was a big jerk. Now I can't say if it was a "swarm" that attacked me, but it was close. Yet I would not be deterred. I ran into my garage, put on my jean jacket, and grabbed a broomstick. I went back into the yard and in the "fog of war" I jammed my broomstick repeatedly and furiously into the beehole. Now all you Little Leaguers at home listen up. Never, never, never jam your broomstick into a beehole. During the course of my crazed butter-churning frenzy of mud, blood, and bees, I lost my sweaty grip on the broomstick and it vanished into the beehole. The ENTIRE broomstick. I got on my knees and peered into the darkness and saw nothing. But I heard them -- the angry angry bees. I was in over my head, I realized. And I ran screaming like a little girl with skinned knees back into the house. Later, I went to my computer and did some research. Turns out my bees weren't bees at all. They were yellowjackets, which are actually wasps. Huh. The science goes like this: yellowjackets don't build their underground nest in the same place two years in a row. You can kill them with powdered poison. If they were going to leave, I decided I wouldn't go to war with them. Which brings me to my point: The Swarm. It was a 1978 Irwin Allen disaster film about killer bees, starring Michael Caine and a cavalcade of stars (Richard Widmark! Fred MacMurray! Patty Duke!). Well, the film was a bomb. Michael Caine regards it as the worst movie he's ever been in. But I'm here to tell you different. The Swarm is a B-movie lover's delight (Richard Chamberlain! Olivia de Havilland! Henry Fonda! And, yes, Slim Pickens!). I remember this movie well because my parents wouldn't let me see it in the theater, so instead I read the novel it was based on, which was written by Arthur Herzog (he also wrote the best killer whale revenge movie of all time, Orca). Later I caught the TV-edited version. Now I hear rumors The Swarm might be remade. I say go for it. But might I suggest a title change? What about: The Yellowjackets in the Hole in the Ground?