Honolulu Lite
EVER SINCE it was announced that caffeine would be used to kill off those hellishly noisy little coqui frogs that have invaded Hawaii, I keep envisioning one of the frogs reaching up to a cashier at Starbucks for a double cappuccino latte and several of his friends pressing themselves up against the glass outside yelling, "No, Willy! Don't do it!" Cute little coqui frogs
have other species
hopping madI'm kind of surprised by the nearly universal blood lust against the tiny green creatures. As wildlife goes, they are cute little dickens, about the size of a macadamia nut and able to leap over small buildings in a single hop. If track star Carl Lewis had been able to jump proportionately as far as a coqui frog, he would have been able to spring completely out of the Olympic stadium, which has almost nothing to do with what we are talking about here. But hopping is one of three things that coqui frogs do extremely well, which makes them hard to catch.
The second thing they do well is emit a loud, piercing screech or chirp, which scientists have measured on the same decibel level as a jet engine. The third thing they do well is make hoochie-koochie with each other, which is why there suddenly are so many of them in Hawaii screaming up a storm. Put those three things together, and the coqui frog has the distinction of being the first species people want to eradicate simply because it's annoying.
With so many endangered species in Hawaii, more than anywhere else in the world, it only takes one foreign plant or animal to wipe out entire lines of life. If the brown tree snake got free in the islands, it could wipe out most bird life, which would in turn wipe out many flowers and plants that depend on birds to propagate. The mongoose was brought in to kill rats, which it petulantly refuses to do, and now there are mongooses all over the place, turning over garbage cans and threatening animals smaller than they are. Kudzu vines invaded and now not only strangle native plants, but cover telephones poles and abandoned cars, making them look like vegetable monsters.
THERE ARE all kinds of insects, animals and plants Hawaii doesn't want, but the coqui is the only one on the hit list because it's noisy. It's too bad coqui frogs don't eat pests we hate, like those huge cockroaches and centipedes, but when you are the size of a macadamia nut, you have to pick your meals carefully.
So it's generally accepted the frogs have to go. Generally, but not unanimously. There are a few people in Hawaii who used to live in Puerto Rico, where the coqui frog is revered. These people will tell you they love coqui frogs and that you get used to the chirps. Of course, these people's hearing is almost completely shot. ("Huh? Tell you about croquet hogs? I don't know any croquet hogs.")
Researchers have figured out that caffeine kills coqui frogs, which is surprising because you'd think it only stunted their growth. They discovered this apparently after trying all kinds of other harmful substances on the frogs: cigarettes, cheap white wine, fatty foods. Nicotine worked pretty good, but the tiny patches kept falling off. I'd have thought that alcohol would be effective at shutting the little buggers up. The moment one of them screamed on the morning after a coqui frog booze bender, the others would have killed him.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite