The first few nights after we moved into our apartment here in Kona, we went to sleep listening to all this chirping and thought it was some kind of night bird. Later when talking to brother Elwood, we found out that it wasn't some kind of night bird, but a tree frog that apparently hitched a ride on some plants from Puerto Rico. There must have been at least 2 of them that slipped into Hawaii without a passport, or maybe it was part of Obama's path to citizenship program, and ICE failed to apprehend them and have then deported. Well they have multiplied, and now there are about a billion of them because they don't seem to have any natural predators. There may not be a billion, but there are a lot of them. They are named Coqui frogs, named after the sound they make. They come out after dark and only the male makes the sound. The people here hate them and have issued an extermination order. It doesn't seem to be having much of an effect, but they don't like them nevertheless. They are hard to find, because they seem to be able to throw their voice and they are only about the size of a quarter. They have tried several things. You can make a trap out of PVC pipe or you can cut all the leaves off your plants and spray them with citric acid or you can sprinkle lime around your plants and trees or you can catch them with your hands and freeze them for 3 hours or boil them or steam them or squash them. The traps don't seem to work very well, and the other methods are expensive and they are hard to catch by hand. I guess that they are working on some kind of wonder spray to exterminate them. We find them fun, and we like being sung to sleep every night by a million voices. Here is a link to them if you would like to hear what they sound like.
Apparently these links can only be viewed on a computer.
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