Odd looking Cicadas

May 29, 2007 (WLS) -- The cicada invasion seems to have hit a snag. People in some areas are seeing a lot of the red eyed creatures. But other people say this is nothing like the invasion of 1990. And out in Elmwood Park a man there says many of the bugs he's finding just don't look right.

Cicadas are definitely not the beautiful people of the bug world and if beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder there are very few beholders. Scott Manno says he lives right across from a forest preserve in Elmwood Park and the bugs have arrived at his home. He started giving them a close look about a week ago.

"I started seeing healthy cicadas. THIS WAS ABOUT A WEEK AGO? About a week ago when they started emerging and becoming healthy and flying off into the trees and everything else. Bit what alarmed me and made me alert Channel 7 News was the deformed ones I've been finding in the past several days," said Scott Manno.

Back in 1990 Scott Manno says he remembers the cicadas as being much bigger and healthier and flying all over the place. Now he has collected hundreds of them that just don't look right.

He seems to have a point. Some have strangely shaped wings others look like they spent 17 years underground for nothing.

"They're very deformed. They look like they're charred and burned. Some of them look like they didn't even exit their ... uuuuum ... shell and all that," Manno said.

So if you're finding strange looking cicadas like this here's the scoop. It's perfectly normal according to a University of Illinois professor he says it's all about timing.

"He told me that it's common for these cicadas to die like this because they've got a three minute time frame to come out of the ground ... vertical ... and start sprouting," Manno said

So if cicadas don't find a tree or something else to cling to in just a few minutes. Their decedents won't be back in 17 years.

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