WALLABIES snacking in opium poppy fields are getting “high as a kite” - and then hopping around to create crop circles.
WALLABIES snacking in opium poppy fields are getting “high as a kite” - and then hopping around to create crop circles.
The bizarre scenes are happening in Tasmania, the world's largest producer of legally-grown opium for the pharmaceutical market.
Tasmania attorney-general Lara Giddings told a budget hearing yesterday that she recently read about the wallabies in a brief on the state's large poppy industry.
She said: “We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles.
“Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high.”
A manager for one of two Tasmanian companies licensed to take medicinal products from poppy straw said wildlife and livestock -including deer and sheep - that eat the poppies are known to “act weird”.
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