Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger

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Don’t eat the daisies (or cats or frogs)

First of all, let me say that I would never seriously consider putting coqui frogs in a blender. Even if the resulting concoction rivaled frozen margaritas for taste and Viagra for effect. I'm sure some Big Island residents, deprived of sleep for weeks because of the little screaming coqui frogs, have considered throwing some in a blender and even worse. Not to make a medicinal concoction, but just to get them to shut the hell up.

I'm almost to the point of running a "Don't Try Anything You Read Here at Home" warning in every column because although you and I know I'm just kidding around, there's always one or two nitwits who think I'm being serious. So when I happened to mention recently that in Peru some frogs are turned into a juice that allegedly makes manly men more manly in the bedroom department and suggested maybe such an enterprise might be a way to deal with the growing coqui frog infestation in Hawaii, there was a real danger that someone actually would make a Coqui Colada and drink it. Don't do it. As annoying as the little blighters are, they don't belong in a blender and probably taste horrible.

My problem is I have a natural talent for making really stupid things sound plausible. Like, to support the idea of eating invasive, non-native species to control them, I mentioned that in Alice Springs, Australia, they cook and eat feral cats. That's because feral cats, like every other non-native creature released into the wilds of Australia, tend to take over that continent. Australians have been hip deep in buffo toads and rabbits since they were released to control some other pest taking over the continent at the time. (And let's not even talk about kangaroos. To this day, no one Down Under knows who thought adding 8-foot-tall jumping rats to the landscape was a grand idea.)

I stirred up a kitties' nest, though, when I mentioned Aussies eating wild cats. Apparently they really aren't. The main proponent of cooking cats is Kay Kessing, an "environmentalist" artist and, curiously, author of children's books, who is fondly known by her growing legion of haters as a "kitty murderer." Kessing is sort of the Michael Vick of Australia since she whipped up a cat casserole at a recent cooking contest.

I received an e-mail from the pro-cat forces boycotting Kessing's previously celebrated paintings and kids' books, and, trust me, dog killer Vick has it pretty good compared with Kessing. If these cat people could catch Kessing, they'd stake her to the ground in the Outback and let iguanas gnaw on her bones.

As a former owner of a cat (the legendary Musubi), let me state clearly that I am against eating cats, even wild ones. Honolulu does have a serious feral cat problem, but luckily the Hawaiian Humane Society has a program for the capture, sterilization and release of feral cats here. (Call 356-2254.)

So, to recap for nitwits preparing to send me hate mail: It is wrong to put frogs in blenders or cats on the barbecue. The jury's still out on geckos. (Kidding. Just kidding.)