Stoned Wallabies Make Crop Circles
It's the tripnaut! writes "The BBC reports that Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around 'as high as a kite', a government official has said. 'The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,' says Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania. 'Then they crash,' she added."
There is a problem with wallabies eating poppy crops in Tasmania. The real story is that the plants are very immature and there is no alkaloid in them. There are circular patches being made in the crops, but this is due to the normal feeding behaviour of wallabies and not because they are bouncing around in circles stoned. No wallabies are falling to the ground stoned. The farmers are setting up patches of preferred feed plants outside the poppy fields to prevent it happening in the future, as Tasmania is one of the leading exporters of opium for medical use, and they want to diminish the impact on revenue.