I'm one of those people who shoos insects outside. I don't off them. Most of them, anyway. There are exceptions.

Mosquitos? Dead. Flies? Dead. Ants? Dead. Things with stingers? Dead.

But that's inside. I don't much worry about critters outside. I'm not partial to things that suck my blood, but I won't go out of my way to kill a mosquito or tick that isn't currently feasting on me.

About three weeks ago, I noticed a big hole in the wooden handle to the door of the smokebox attachment to my charcoal grill. I wasn't particularly concerned, but I was curious. I pulled up the door, and the handle vibrated. I dropped the door and heard a menacing buzz.

I slowly--and carefully--re-opened the smokebox door and took a closer look at the hole. I figured it was a wood bee. We've got a bunch of those at the preschool where my boys have gone, and they're pretty rough-looking customers. But they don't seem inclined to sting.

This critter, though, sounded like it had some serious intent. So I went back inside, got a spray bottle of insect repellent and shot it into the hole. I figured if I contaminated the nest (or whatever it was), the bee would fly out and never come back.

The repellent permanently stained the rusty patina of the smokebox, but the bee did not come out. I could see it convulsing, moving in an agitated fashion. I wondered, "Can Deet kill?" I thought it just lobotomized the bugs. Well, I never really thought about it much. But I didn't think it killed, anyway.

The buzzing was really loud, so I simply slammed the door of the smokebox down. A couple seconds later, the bee staggered out and flew away. It looked just like a bumblebee. I had been freaked out by a bumblebee. How lame is that?

But I was wrong. Turns out that some wood bees are pure black, and others are yellow and black. I stumbled onto one that looks like a bumblebee.

Every place I looked said that the nests could extend for as far as four feet into the wood. My handle is about five inches across and one inch in diameter. If this bee was looking to build a Xylocopinae Taj Majal, it picked the wrong piece of soft wood.

This bee was, truly, nothing to worry about or even think about. So tonight I grilled. I only use the smokebox when I'm smoking something sizable (a turkey, etc.), so I was simply using the grill. But at some point, a good-sized piece of charcoal fell out of the grill, into the smokebox and stopped at a point just inside the door. Close enough to the handle to make things a bit uncomfortable.

I went outside to throw the chicken and corn on, and I heard the buzz. But it wasn't the former, menacing buzz. This was just as loud, but it sounded wounded. The buzz rose and fell in intensity. It sounded like the bee wasn't doing well. This is when I discovered the charcoal behind the smokebox door. And I didn't do anything about it. I just shut the door and waited to see what happened.

You know the old story about putting frogs in cold water and slowing heating it up. Supposedly frogs boil to death without noticing. This isn't true. A good friend of mine decided to try this particular experiment at home, and the fact is that the frogs get pretty damned pissed off as the water heats up, and some of them are strong enough to hurl themselves out of the pot.

Bees aren't as smart as frogs. The heat really bothered this bee, but it didn't leave its hole. And when I checked an hour later, it wasn't buzzing. When I opened and slammed shut the smokebox door, I heard nothing. I could see the bee still in the hole, but it didn't appear to be moving.

So I guess I killed a bee. An indirect murder, perhaps, but murder nonetheless. I could've moved that coal without any difficulty. But I was more curious to see what the bee would do. I really didn't think it would simply sit until it fried.

Of course, maybe my previous experiment with the Deet scrambled this particular bee's brain (what there was of it, anyway) so that it didn't have the capacity to flee from extreme discomfort. I suppose I tainted that second experiment. And I'll have to live with that.

I feel a little bad about the bee. It would've cost me about a buck to buy some new wood for the handle if, somehow, the bee actually destroyed it. Truthfully, I wasn't out to get the little guy, but I was curious to see what it would take to get it to move. Maybe the answer is nothing.

Maybe that bee was like Harry Truman, the guy who refused to move even though he knew the imminent eruption of Mt. St. Helens would probably kill him. He heard the rumbling, saw the steam and stayed in his cabin. And when the volcano blew, the lava and mud buried him.

But I'm not trying to make any grand point here. I killed a bee, and that's the whole story.

Jon Worley killed a mouse last month.