A bug is a bug.

I woke up at 4am. I have no idea why. Maybe it was those 5 beers I drank, maybe my body hates me. Maybe I forgot what a sunset looks like. At any rate, here I am.

It is now 5am and I have decided to blog. Because what else are you going to do at 5am but talk about yourself to yourself?

When I was little, I liked to play with rolly pollies. What kid doesn't? BUT- when I was young, we called them potato bugs. Anybody else? I thought that when people called them rolly pollies it was some new-agey conspiracy. It's a potato bug, People! A pox on them! I would stand my ground, and call them Potato Bugs.

This is an actual potato bug.
Also known as the Jerusalem Cricket.

These are some sort of beetle.
Also called a potato bug.

Tasty huh?

I pulled this info from wikipedia:

Jerusalem crickets, also called "potato bugs" are a group of large, flightless insects of the genus Stenopelmatus. They are native to the western United States and parts of Mexico.

Despite their names, Jerusalem crickets are a distinct lineage within the Orthoptera, separate from crickets (eg Gryillidae), are not native to Jerusalem, and they do not prefer potatoes for food. Active usually at night, the insects use their strong mandibles to feed primarily on dead organic material but can also eat other insects.^[2]Their highly adapted feet are used for burrowing beneath moist soil to feed on decaying root plants and tubers.

THEY DON'T EVEN EAT POTATOES!!! They don't hang out with potatoes, they don't look like potatoes...

Also, we all know wikipedia can lie so I'm not hanging my hat on that answer.

THIS is what I remember a potato bug being. 

And that lying son-of-a-bitch wikipedia agrees!    But how can you have 2 VERY different bugs, with the same name?  Well, probably the same way people share the same names. A name is a name.  "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" ~ Bill Shakespeare  (look, when you know the guy as well as I do, you call him Bill)

Only in this case it's not a rose, it's a bug. and it does't smell sweet, it scares the living crap out of you if you see it on the ground. (the former, not the latter)

Circus Bugs!

So there you have it. 2 VERY different bugs. One common name. 

Will I see the error of my ways and stop calling it a potato bug? Meh, probably not. It still is, after all- technically, called a Potato bug. 

My daughter calls them "polly pollies"  so if anything.... I'll end up calling it that. (because awesome parenting means enforcing poor speech habits because it sounds just so darn cute)

Potato, pah-tah-to. Whatever. The point is... it's 5:30am and I'm awake, dammit. 

This blog has been brought to you by the number 5  and the letter B.

For more funny shenanigens, check out this potato bug site. 

http://www.potatobugs.com/faq/index.html

here is an excerpt :

Q: Why are potato bugs so ugly and frightening? Why do they look part human? Where did they come from?
A: The most widely held belief is that God didn’t create potato bugs. It was Satan’s work. And amongst evolutionists and non-religious types, the consensus is that potato bugs came from outer space.