A little night music

Katydids sing of love nightly in a raucous chorus. — moxlux/Creative Commons

These August nights, I have a Latin rhythm section in my back yard.

No, no - not a bunch of muchachos with cowbells and congas. I'm talking about the raucous chorus of crickets and katydids that nightly make unearthly music out under the trees.

Unlike blaring snatches of drive-by car radios or the rumble of trucks on the distant highway, grinding through their gears, this is a night noise I love. It has a good beat - you can dance to it. I'm tempted to grab a pair of maracas and join right in.

''Crick-crick-crick-crick," sing the crickets in bouncy up-tempo. "Cheeka-cheeka-cheek, cheeka-cheek!" holler the katydids. (Their song is also rendered "Katy, Katy did, Katy did," but I hear it differently.)

From across the yard, an alternate group of katydids responds "Chack-achack, chack-achack!" in a slightly different tone, call and response fashion. It all sounds like eerie background music from a sci-fi film. Who needs a boombox?

As most of you probably know, this buggy commotion can be LOUD, louder even than the dawn chorus of birds, chattering and cheeping away in the early morning hours. On and on they go, these tireless insect musicians, with never a dropped beat.

What are they singing about? It's love, of course, an outpouring of passionate longing. In the case of both bugs, it's the males - not the silent females - who drum and fiddle, hoping to get the ear of a chitinous little lady love.

The crickets and katydids make noise by rubbing their wings together, scraping a hard ridge on one wing across a serrated file-type structure on the other - stridulating, it's technically called.

Each species of cricket has its own unique song, so as not to attract the wrong sort of woman. As for the objects of their affection, they're listening, all right - with the ears in their knees.

Crickets add their own up-tempo song. — Adonista/Creative Commons

Yes, that's right, folks. Crickets have a membrane-covered opening on their front legs, just below the main joint, that allows them to hear. It's a strange but true fact that only the crickets, grasshoppers, locusts and cicadas (and some species of moths) have hearing organs of the eardrum sort.

If you were a Boy or Girl Scout, undoubtedly some adult told you that you can tell the temperature by timing the chirps of a cricket. Time the number of chirps in 13 seconds and add 40 (i.e., 25 chirps + 40 = 65 degrees).

Don't get too excited about this, though, because the formula really applies only to the snowy tree cricket, not the common field cricket. Who knew? And how does one tell these two common species apart?

As a general rule, all insects sing faster in warm weather, slower in colder temperatures. Perverse scientists have proven this by heating crickets up; perhaps this was suggested by their scientific name, Gryllus.

You may have noticed that toward the end of summer, crickets develop a melancholy cadence that tells you the season is over. And they tell you over and over and over again.

Katydids are members of the grasshopper family. They are alternately known as "long-horned grasshoppers" on account of their extremely long antennae. These guys also make noise with their wings, but where the cricket folds its right wing over its left, the katydid folds left over right. (You have to get very, very close to check this out, however.)

Now for the $64,000 question: What exactly did Katy do? We have to thank May Berenbaum in her book "Ninety-nine Gnats, Nits and Nibblers" (University of Illinois Press) for unearthing an explanation, no matter how implausible.

Here goes: It seems a Mrs. A.C. Dufour in 1864 penned some verses fingering Katy as one of two sisters interested in the same young lad, Oscar by name. Oscar made a possibly fatal mistake, going after Blanche and scorning the lovely Katy. Not long after, Oscar disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Speculation concerning Katy's culpability continues nightly: Did she or didn't she?

Next time you hear a little night music, think of all those crazy bugs out there, wailing away in the singles bar of the insect world. Meanwhile, please excuse me - I'm going back out to the yard. The moon is full and someone's asking for the next dance.