09-04-2007, 06:50 AM
Last weekend we had a group of our neighbors together, the big County sprayer on the trailer, a truck to pull it with and over 300 pounds of hydrated lime. It takes one person to watch the sprayer, one person to man the hose nozzle and two or three people to shift the hose around since it is very similar to a fire hose. All this in the dark, too. The frogs near our houses are now much quieter, but there are still some there. We don't even have a very big infestation!
Part of the problem with using hydrated lime to kill coquis is you have to get the lime ON THE FROG and not merely on the foliage. During the day the frogs hide in the leaf litter on the forest floor so you have to run around in the dark spraying lime at echoing frogs. That is, if you can get close enough to the areas they are in. The terrain is not flat and the sprayer is huge and on a trailer. The frog calls echo off of things and it is difficult to determine exactly where they are.
Hopefully, with the new baking soda fogger - sprayers which can be carried and used by one person we will be able to get closer to where the frogs are and not have to get a large group of people and trucks together to get the frogs. The hydrated lime must be on the frogs and becomes ineffective within several hours. The baking soda is supposed to stay active until the next big rain and will kill the frogs when they travel across the sprayed area so hopefully we will be able to spray the areas during the day and still get the frogs.
We could also use a predator or two who would like to eat frogs, perhaps the bufo will? I've heard of chickens eating coqui frogs and they will scratch and turn over the leaf litter, however, Kauai is covered with chickens and I hear they have frogs, too. A scary thought is if the brown tree snake from Guam gets to Hawaii then with the coquis already here it will have loads of food to eat so then it would proliferate as fast as the wretched coquis.
Part of the problem with using hydrated lime to kill coquis is you have to get the lime ON THE FROG and not merely on the foliage. During the day the frogs hide in the leaf litter on the forest floor so you have to run around in the dark spraying lime at echoing frogs. That is, if you can get close enough to the areas they are in. The terrain is not flat and the sprayer is huge and on a trailer. The frog calls echo off of things and it is difficult to determine exactly where they are.
Hopefully, with the new baking soda fogger - sprayers which can be carried and used by one person we will be able to get closer to where the frogs are and not have to get a large group of people and trucks together to get the frogs. The hydrated lime must be on the frogs and becomes ineffective within several hours. The baking soda is supposed to stay active until the next big rain and will kill the frogs when they travel across the sprayed area so hopefully we will be able to spray the areas during the day and still get the frogs.
We could also use a predator or two who would like to eat frogs, perhaps the bufo will? I've heard of chickens eating coqui frogs and they will scratch and turn over the leaf litter, however, Kauai is covered with chickens and I hear they have frogs, too. A scary thought is if the brown tree snake from Guam gets to Hawaii then with the coquis already here it will have loads of food to eat so then it would proliferate as fast as the wretched coquis.
Kurt Wilson