Neighbors No Fans Of Nightly Frog Chorus -- Letter Seeks To Quiet `Roar' From Pond

The love songs of Pacific chorus frogs are sweet music to Sandy Price's ears.

Drawn to Price's elaborate fish pond in the back of her north Renton home, the native frogs strike up a nightly chorus to woo members of the opposite sex. Price finds it soothing.

But some of her neighbors aren't charmed by the throaty love ballads. While the frogs play at love into the night, neighbors say, they can't get any sleep.

"I've never heard anything like it in my life," one neighbor said. "It's like a roar."

Another neighbor claimed the noise was as loud as an airplane flying overhead. Both declined to give their names.

Ten neighbors have signed a letter demanding the Prices exterminate the frogs and turn off the pond's recirculating pump at night.

"The noise is especially loud during the evenings and nights, disturbing our sleep as well as the peaceful enjoyment of our property," the letter says. The neighbors say the noise - a combination of frog song, waterfall and pump - violates the nuisance covenant of the China Creek development.

"It's beyond our belief anybody can be this negative," said Price, explaining that the frogs don't croak all year long.

"It's just in the spring that they get pretty randy," she said.

Two years ago, Price and her husband John spent about $6,000 to build the elaborate fish pond and waterfall, complete with wetland plants, in their back yard in the new China Creek development of upscale homes. The pond is home to a dozen Koi goldfish that the Prices, partial to pets, have given names like Madonna (for the silver one) and Cartier (for the gold one).

To their surprise, the frogs migrated from China Creek and took up residence in the back yard, snapping up insects and singing their love songs.

The chorus frog gets its name because of its habit of joining in chorus whenever other frogs of its species begin to sing, said King County planner and ecologist Klaus Richter. It is a regionally abundant species but is extremely scarce in developments, he said.

Price doesn't know how many lived near the pond during the spring, but thinks she is down to about a half-dozen now.

But one neighbor said it sounded like there were 100 frogs singing, croaking and doing whatever else frogs do.

At one point, Price said, she and her husband captured the frogs at night using a flashlight and returned them to China Creek. But the frogs always came back to the Prices' pond.

Neighbors say they are asking the developer to investigate the matter to see if it violates restrictive covenants; Price says her lawyer, Linda Youngs of Hanson Baker Ludlow & Drumheller, believes the pond complies with the development restrictions.

Pacific chorus frogs are about an inch in length and can change color from brown to green, said Richter. They have pads on their toes that allow them to climb trees. Until recently they were called Pacific tree frogs.

They eat a variety of things, including small slugs, crane flies and mosquitoes.

Richter said the frogs' range might have been constricted by the development, and they migrated to the Prices' pond in search of new habitat.