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Indeed, they don't like baking soda. It seems it will kill them - we sometimes spray it around with a leaf blower.
I have had the same experience as others - they don't bother me as much. I haven't grown more tolerant, I think they have toned it down a bit. Fewer but larger individuals, that does seem to be the case. I also read that larger coquis could be eating smaller ones.
Nevertheless, I will keep hunting them and I will keep looking for a more permanent solution.
Tom, if you have any big piles of vegetation (e.g. palm fronds) anywhere near your property then removing that is probably the best thing you can do to cut down on the coqui numbers.
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quote:
Tom, if you have any big piles of vegetation (e.g. palm fronds) anywhere near your property then removing that is probably the best thing you can do to cut down on the coqui numbers.
Yes, I try and clear up all the fronds as soon as I can but do have a lot of trees and vegetation close to the house, so suspect it doesn't make a huge difference. The real problem is that I'm surrounded by unoccupied and uncleared lots so even if I do kill a bunch of them they seem to invade again just a few days later. (The neighboring lot to the north, for instance, is literally 20 feet from my deck).
I'm interested in the technique you use for spreading baking soda. My leaf blower creates a mini-hurricane so am not sure how I could use it to distribute baking soda in any controlled fashion at all, so would love to hear how you do it!
Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/
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We were shown how to do this by Mark the Coqui Killer. I haven't done it myself for a while
so I may be a bit rough on the details. Basically you get a gas-powered leaf blower (e.g. Ryobi)
and you jimmy open the intake grill. Shooting from the hip, you use a yoghurt pot full of baking soda
to slowly feed powder into the intake, which then shoots out of the nozzle. Mine has a throttle
so you can control the power. It's best to do this when it hasn't rained for a while and you
don't expect it to rain for the next day or so (difficult in Puna, I know).
We just spread all over the areas where frogs are known to hang out. The more frogs you have,
the better it works. It can get expensive, so make sure you buy in bulk from Costco.
Sure, frogs hang out in overgrown lots but piles of palm fronds (which people dump in
vacant lots all over Puna) are an ideal incubator for frogs. I see literally hundreds of them
when I clean out piles of old palm fronds near my property. I can usually kill more in a day
than I do all week at night. If the government ever decides that they want to try to do something
against coquis again then the best thing they can do is clean up all of the dumped vegetation.
If you're around at Christmas then maybe I should come over and check out your coqui situation.
I know where they like to hang out.
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Thanks so much for that info!
My leaf blower is electric and only seems to have hurricane force 4 or 5 settings but think I can come up with a cunning plan now.
Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/
