Dale Richter said he found the rare Brood X blue-eyed cicada after two days of searching his 151-acre soybean farm off Trenton Oxford Road in Wayne Twp., where he said the cicadas seem to prefer his sugar maple trees on the property.
Experts say fewer than one in a million of the periodic cicadas will have blue eyes instead of the normal bright red eyes.
Richter, a past candidate for Butler County sheriff, said he decided to look for one after his son and his friends were at the farm over the weekend and were talking about how scientists were willing to pay money to study blue-eyed cicadas.
It is a hoax that a blue-eyed cicada is worth money, but Richter said he would love for his cicada — believed to be a female because it hasn’t made any noise — to go to a researcher.
In fact, Richter said he planned to contact the region’s cicada expert, professor Gene Kritsky of Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
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