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Wild Parrots Raid India Poppy Fields To Get High On Opium

Wild Parrots Raid India Poppy Fields To Get High On Opium

Polly wants something stronger than a cracker these days ― a lot stronger.

Wild parrots have been raiding poppy fields in India in order to get high on the flowers’ opium.

As can be seen in the video above, the dope-craving birds will sit perched on trees near the poppies until workers slip open the pods to help the plants ripen quicker, according to the Mirror.

The parrots, numbering in the hundreds, have learned not to squawk. They swoop down, nibble off the stalks and fly back to the trees, where they nod off for hours, sometimes even falling to their deaths.

“Once they have their fill, they sit on trees and sleep there for hours. Some of them can be seen circling or staggering before falling from the trees due to overdose of opium,” Kishore Kumar Dhaker, a poppy farmer in western India, told Odisha360.com.

No one knows why these wild parrots are so high on opium, but the problem started in 2015 at poppy fields near the city of Chittorgarh.

Now, the opium-loving parrots have also taken over Neemuch, a town 40 miles away, according to the Daily Mail.

This opioid crisis is for the birds in more ways than one. Besides problems parrots face with monkeys on their back, local farmers are also suffering.

The Indian government requires farmers to provide a pre-agreed quantity of opium annually for medicinal use, and the drug-addled parrots are cutting into their earnings, according to Sobharam Rathod, an opium farmer from Neemuch. He estimated parrots are stealing around 10 percent of his crop, according to the Mirror.

Buzz60 notes in the video above that farmers have tried everything from firecrackers to beating tin drums and hurling stones, but nothing keeps these parrots from their fix.

Hopefully, other animals won’t parrot these birds.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.