Roy Hamilton’s video of his frog-filled pool has gone viral. Photo: Roy Hamilton (Twitter).
Riverina farmer Roy Hamilton has ”gone viral” after posting a video of his frog-filled pool on Twitter this week.
“I really didn’t expect that to happen,” Roy says with a laugh as he heads out to the paddock where the harvest is in full swing.
“I really just posted to Twitter looking for a practical solution for keeping the little ones out.”
Roy and his family operate a 4400-hectare operation near Rand, south-west of Wagga, where the receding floodwaters have left an invading army of little brown frogs.
Post floods :Anyone ever built a frog exclusion fence .. ideas welcome , not recipes 😀 pic.twitter.com/mYw7hYRZvr
— Roy Hamilton (@bogandillan) December 11, 2022
“Post floods :Anyone ever built a frog exclusion fence … ideas welcome, not recipes,” reads the post accompanying the 23-second video.
“Just wonder if anyone else is having any frog issues in their pool since the floods,” Roy says as the camera pans down across a pool wriggling with thousands of amphibians and pauses in a corner that is choked with the little buggers.
“Basically, the whole farm was a massive pond or swamp for nine weeks and if you went for a walk in the morning through the floodwater you could see tens of thousands of tadpoles for miles everywhere.
“A couple of years ago we were using the same scoop to clear out a couple of hundred mice every night in the mice plague.”
Roy has been doing his best to relocate them to the dam and the nearby creek and says his forearms are bulking up from scooping up buckets full of frogs every morning.
While he hasn’t been keen to try any of the recipe suggestions that have been sent his way, Roy says the local carnivores are all looking better fed than they were a few weeks ago.
“I think a lot of the apex predators are doing very well. I can see some very fat, round snakes around here and the dogs are sick of them!”
One commenter has provided a practical solution. Photo: Twitter.
Proposed solutions have included draining the pool or placing a ring of salt around the edge, but one commenter from Leeton has demonstrated a tried-and-true method.
“As there is in the Twitter world, there’s been a few weird and wacky ideas and a few recipes thrown in as well,” Roy laughs.
“But one gentleman was actually building a shed and he was using 300 mm flashing, which is just a right angle so it’ll stand up, and he just put that around the pool.”
Roy’s hoping the frog flood will begin to recede as things continue to dry out, and in the meantime, he’s harvesting while the sun shines.
“Look, we’re blessed. The whole area was in the middle of flooding and it really looked like it wouldn’t stop but we haven’t seen any big rain developing lately,” he smiles.
“Most people are getting a good percentage of their paddocks done, which is fantastic.”
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