The Guardian has reported on a rather amusing, somewhat daft police-based pickle that went down in Argentina recently. Namely, eight officers have been fired after they claimed that half a tonne of seized marijuana, stored in a warehouse, went missing because it had been eaten by mice.
Around 6,000 kilograms (13,228 pounds) of the stuff was kept in that seemingly secure location for around two years, but an inspection revealed that 540 kilograms (1,191 pounds) had gone missing. The city’s new police commissioner suspected it may have been down to the recently retired old commissioner, one Javier Specia.
Specia and his subordinates told a judge that the marijuana had been consumed by pesky rodents, but a forensic examination said that even a horde of mice couldn’t have done this. If they somehow did manage it, you’d see plenty of dead mice in that warehouse.
Incidentally, marijuana is legal in Argentina, but for medicinal and federal research purposes only. If the cannabis co-conspirators did indeed steal, smoke, or perhaps sell the stolen produce – details of which remain unknown at this point – then it’s safe to say that things aren’t going to go well for them.
Arguably, the best part of this story is that they all used the same flimsy cover story, which suggests this was the very best explanation they came up with when discussing it.
Now, here’s the question you’ve all be waiting for: Do mice eat cannabis when given the chance?
A highly unscientific Google search reveals that plenty of people that grow or otherwise store cannabis chat to each other about how mice – real or otherwise – are thieving their sweet mary jane when they’re not looking. One particular individual points out that mice are fairly good at scuttling away from the scene of the crime, referring to them as “good escapists”.
There are, rather curiously, a handful of cases where mice have genuinely been the antagonists in the tale, though. One, as spotted by Grist in 2013, found that three bags of marijuana at a police storage facility in Wichita had been torn open by mice. They’d both eaten some and even nested in it.
Whatever the case, any weed-stealing mice that didn’t die of an overdose wouldn’t have got particularly far from the scene of the crime. Research investigating the effects of THC – marijuana’s main active ingredient – on mice have come to a truly unsurprisingly conclusion: They become incredibly lazy and just can’t be bothered to do anything in particular.
[H/T: The Guardian]
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