Many defunct processes, cpu use with apache 2.0.52

[CR <c3@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have Apache running about 5 vhosts, few of which really get much in 
the way of hits. If I run top, I see a lot of <defunct> httpd processes, 
and each one is listed as using 1-5% of the CPU. They usually show up 
and disappear in a cycle. Here is a sample:

top - 08:32:31 up 416 days,  8:14,  2 users,  load average: 2.40, 2.36, 2.17
Tasks: 107 total,   5 running,  90 sleeping,   0 stopped,  12 zombie
Cpu(s): 56.3% us, 21.5% sy,  0.0% ni, 22.2% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:   1027556k total,  1010636k used,    16920k free,   304016k buffers
Swap:  2040244k total,    31368k used,  2008876k free,   379012k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 6223 www       16   0     0    0    0 Z  2.3  0.0   0:00.07 httpd 
<defunct>
 6254 www       25   0     0    0    0 Z  2.3  0.0   0:00.07 httpd 
<defunct>
 6256 www       17   0     0    0    0 Z  2.3  0.0   0:00.07 httpd 
<defunct>
 6253 www       25   0     0    0    0 Z  2.0  0.0   0:00.06 httpd 
<defunct>
 6255 www       25   0     0    0    0 Z  2.0  0.0   0:00.06 httpd 
<defunct>
 6257 www       19   0     0    0    0 Z  2.0  0.0   0:00.06 httpd 
<defunct>
 6258 www       17   0     0    0    0 Z  2.0  0.0   0:00.06 httpd 
<defunct>
 6259 www       16   0     0    0    0 Z  2.0  0.0   0:00.06 httpd 
<defunct>
 6260 www       21   0     0    0    0 Z  2.0  0.0   0:00.06 httpd 
<defunct>
 6261 www       18   0     0    0    0 Z  2.0  0.0   0:00.06 httpd 
<defunct>
 6262 www       22   0     0    0    0 Z  2.0  0.0   0:00.06 httpd 
<defunct>
 6263 www       23   0     0    0    0 Z  2.0  0.0   0:00.06 httpd 
<defunct>
18714 root      25   0 51196  28m 6628 R  1.0  2.8 400:42.72 httpd

The part that bothers me is that top shows over 50% cpu use, yet this 
server is basically idle, and according to top itself, no other 
processes other than httpd are up to much. The loadavg is pretty much 
always at or above 1.9.

If I continually ls -l my log files directory, they are not growing, so 
I assume the server isn't actually serving anything in that time.

Some more info:
Server version: Apache/2.0.52
Server built:   Jul 14 2007 11:53:18

<IfModule prefork.c>
StartServers       8
MinSpareServers    5
MaxSpareServers   20
ServerLimit      256
MaxClients       256
MaxRequestsPerChild  4000
</IfModule>
<IfModule worker.c>
StartServers         2
MaxClients         150
MinSpareThreads     25
MaxSpareThreads     75
ThreadsPerChild     25
MaxRequestsPerChild  0
</IfModule>

I appreciate any help. To be honest, I didn't look very hard on the 
internet before posting this. My apologies if it has been covered 
hundreds of times already.

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