Ah, the sweet smells, sunshine, and sounds of imminent summer.

Except – you know – without the warm enough weather to actually open the pools on Memorial Day weekend.

(insert disclaimer here about full realization regarding the importance of the pools or their openings to the public paling in comparison to the real importance of memorial day)

Anyway, back to the sounds of summer.

As the hooplah about noisy bug swarms began to rank up there with “small talk about the weather”, I had a vague memory of these other bugs that similarly caught everyone’s attention back in the 90’s: Katydids. Naturally, I thought, “Oh – I bet they’re the same thing, but Katydid is just… like… the emcee name Cicada’s use to sound cool.” Despite my smug assumption that I’d made such an intelligent extrapolation and conclusion, that one percent of doubt, forced me to look it up.

And realize I was wrong.

So I generated this diagra-meme for you – that you might never forget or be dubbed a bug-racist for thinking they’re “all the same”:

Fry might be confused, but now you don't have to be....
Fry might be confused, but now you don’t have to be….

Because most of their disparities bored me (and because I was still butt-hurt about being wrong), the gist of what I remembered is that they make a ruckus at different times, they make a different sounding ruckus when they do, and that the sound of either reminds me to look everywhere the moment I step outside to ensure no bugs are on or near me. For example, Cicadas make that rapidfire “ch-ch-ch” sound, while Katydids got their name because someone thought their 3 or 4 syllabic call sounds like, “Ka-ty-did” (pause) “Ka-ty-didn’t” (although I tend to think that in application it sounds more like a Friday 13th soundtrack).

So, in summation:

This is what a Cicada looks and sounds like:

This is what a Katydid sounds like:

And this is what a knighted english muffin looks like:

englishmuffin

xoxo
<3~A