Add this to the list of complaints that neighbors have about Home Depot stores: mating frogs. According to the Honolulu Star Bulletin, peeping frogs have been keeping residents out of bed for the last year and a half on Oahu. The sound of male frogs whistling to attract females has become so maddening, that “a band of frog hunting volunteers” has been dispatched at night with flashlights to try and hunt the little peepers down. The gray-brown Caribbean tree frogs, known as “coqui”, now “plague” Oahu, the Big Island and Maui. The US. Department of Agriculture says that a population of coqui frogs can emit noise as loud as a truck. On Oahu, the coqui frog was discovered in the garden shops of Home Depot. One store reportedly has a population of coqui living in its parking lot. One Home Depot garden manager told the newspaper that the company is giving fliers from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to all its employees. A biologist from the University of Hawaii said “It’s too bad the state doesn’t have more clout because they’re still exporting plants from the Big Island, and Home Depot is still selling plants.” Officials are now talking about using highly concentrated caffeine as a pesticide. It’s not easy being a frog at Home Depot.
So Home Depot has helped introduce the Caribbean tree frog onto Hawaii! The solution to this problem is obvious: either prevent more Home Depots from opening on the islands, or, build more Starbucks outlets to sell highly concentrated coffee to residents who want to climb trees to hunt the coqui. That seems like the appropriate corporate response. Every Home Depot on the islands could have a couple of Starbucks located in their parking lots, brewing up “coqui coffee” to help people on Oahu get some sleep Ironically, coffee is ususally associated with sleep prevention, but in this Home Depot case, it could do just the opposite. As if Home Depot truck noise was not enough, neighbors must now contend with coqui trucks as well. Jeepers, creepers, Home Depot: Where’d you get those peepers?
