When I was a kid, Poppa had a light bulb hanging on a cord in front of the garage.  He liked to burn the light while he was working in his shop at night.  However, he got considerably annoyed at the swarm of bugs that always engulfed the bulb.  Thousands of them regularly swarmed around the light, in  every possible size and variety.  There were so many of them, and in such an amazing variety, that we didn't really want to walk anywhere near the light bulb.  If Alfred Hitchcock had ever heard of the situation, then he might have been inspired to write a move called The Bugs.

Eventually, Poppa got sufficiently annoyed that he rummaged around through his vast collection of junk to see if he could find something to do about the bugs.  What he came up with was the remains of an old vacuum cleaner.  The relic consisted of the motor, the attached squirrel-cage blower, and the part of the casing that included the snout that had, in a bygone age, connected to the vacuum cleaner bag.  It was the perfect piece of hardware for his purpose.

Poppa attached an old electrical cord to the thing and perched it atop a pile of old boxes, under the light bulb.  When he backed up to look at the result, the thing was strategically located about 12 inches below the light bulb.  He plugged it in and we all watched in wide-eyed wonder.  The suction was considerable and hundreds of bugs began to be sucked into the squirrel-cage blower.  They whapped and sputtered around inside the blower to the accompaniment of a variety of interesting noises and were then blown out the snout and across the yard.  Somebody promptly dubbed it the Bugburger Machine.

The thing became locally famous.  Sometimes, the neighbor kids would come over and we'd all sit and talk and watch the Bugburger Machine.  We'd be particularly delighted to watch a conspicuously large bug fly lazily around and around the bulb until, inevitably, it would get too close to the opening and get sucked in.  The large ones went around and around in the blower before the pieces were small enough to go through the vanes and get splatted across the yard.

It was either that or watch television.  Which would you have preferred?