Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident  

Until this week I thought locust, cicada and katydid were different names for the same critter, like pop, soft drink and soda all indicated carbonated beverages. Regional differences. Wrong. 

This is a locust. I think. A cicada looks like a big, scary fly. When I was a boy in northwestern Ohio I saw lots of outgrown nymphal exoskeletons of cicadas at the beginning of fall. Everybody called them locusts. I thought “cicada” was the scientific name for locust. 

This persistent misidentification has long been common in the United States. England has only one species of cicada. They are little noted as their mating call frequency is above human hearing. When English colonialists observed the American cicadas’ swarming cycle, it proved so alarming they thought they were observing a biblical plague of locusts.  

A real plague of locusts is significantly scarier and more destructive than the swarming cycles of cicadas. Locusts are usually solitary creatures, until they experience a food shortage. Then they transform. They start to follow each other in the same direction in search of food. They even change size and color, like Bruce Banner becoming The Hulk. Locusts will strip a field bare, and cause food shortages for humans. 

I still equate the loud sounds of insects at dusk with the ending of summer and the beginning of school. This sound is largely cicadas. The soft buzzing sound of locusts may add harmony. Katydids provide a raspy, higher-pitched percussion, their mating call. “Katydid” is not a folk name for cicadas or locusts, as I also mistakenly thought. They are cricket-like and include over six thousand species, most of which are light green. 

The forest sounds of approaching autumn are more variegated and complex than I imaged. What I thought were locusts are many species of several different distinct animals. The older I get, the wiser it seems to consider the possibility that on almost any fact, I might be completely wrong. The things I am most likely to be wrong about are the things I have been sure about the longest.