AS FOR BUGS, I liken them to kids playing baseball. As long as they stay outdoors, they can be tolerated. But when they try to take their act indoors, it is time to go to war.

When bugs invade, I fight back. I chase down moths with a folded newspaper. I assault flies with magazines. I swat anything that crawls with anything that is handy.

When bees encroach, I try several tactics to get rid of them. There is the catch-and-release maneuver, which calls for trapping the bee in an empty mayonnaise jar, then releasing the often-angry captive in the back yard. There is also the crunch-and-kill move, which requires a sure eye, steady nerves, and a sturdy fly swatter. Both of these methods work well when the number of bees is equal to, or less than, the number of humans in the house.

However, when there are more bees than people in your abode, your tactics shift. You run away.

That is what my family did one summer when a few hundred yellow jackets set up shop in a beach house. We summoned an exterminator, scurried off to the ocean, and by late afternoon were able to reclaim the dwelling.

I also rely on fear. I try to make bugs afraid of me. I try to teach them a lesson.

If, for example, I catch a couple of audacious ants moving across the kitchen floor, I step on them, and leave their mangled forms for other ants to see. I do this to let potential intruders know what would happen to them if they dared to cross the kitchen door threshold.

Some members of my family object to this strategy of deterrence. They contend that rather than striking fear in the thorax of an insect, the practice of leaving dead bugs lying around the house fills them (my family) with revulsion.

So the other day, I caved in to my wife's pleas and agreed to remove the bug body from inside the oven clock. The bug had scurried into the glass-enclosed clock a few days earlier when I was in hot pursuit of it with a newspaper. It was a standoff at the oven clock. I could see the bug through the glass, but I couldn't get to him. I was frustrated.

For a few minutes, it seemed that the bug, by somehow squeezing into the sanctuary, had outsmarted me.

But then I unleashed my backup attack. I turned on the oven, to 450 degrees. Some of the heat from the oven transferred to the clock and dispatched the bug. I left the shriveled insect there, as a deterrent to other bugs. I saw evidence that the warning had been heeded. For days after the bug-baking incident, no more scurrying forms were spotted in the kitchen.

Eventually I got around to removing the body. This required turning off the electricity that powered the oven. I flipped circuit breakers off and on, trying to find the one that controlled the flow of electricity to the oven. Before I found the right switch, I briefly turned off the power to virtually every part of the house.

When I found the proper circuit I removed the clock from the oven, pried the cover off of it, removed the corpse and then put the clock and its cover back in place.

I felt so smart. Until the next morning. That is when I discovered that while flipping the circuit breakers, I had wiped out the "memory" of the electric coffee maker.

When I restored power to the coffee maker, it went into its default mode, sending out a command to brew coffee at midnight, not at six o'clock in the morning.

So when I came down to breakfast the next morning, the coffee was cold.

It may not be true that the only good bug is a dead bug. But it is true that some dead bugs are smarter than some living humans.

Pub Date: 3/06/99