The trick to telling a convincing lie is to wrap the falsehood with a certain degree of plausibility. In this instance, investigators were asked to believe that mice ate 1/2 ton of marijuana stored in a police evidence room. Argentina-cops-who-claimed-mice-ate-missing-marijuana-are-fired-report-says.

IN the early 80’s I was assisting the City Attorney as she conducted an inventory of the police evidence room. She found several packages that had been compromised and the contents were exposed. In each instance it was marijuana. The exterior packaging, brown paper bags showed gnaw marks and ragged holes. The bulk of the marijuana was still packaged. As a food source, it was of questionable value. As nesting material it was adequate. She was pretty certain that the leaky package was due to nefarious human activity. She was kneeling down to pull a five-pound bundle off the lowest shelf. This caused a mouse to break and run between her legs and over her calf. The rodeo was on!

I don’t think we were missing more than an ounce of weed. Rather than have another mouse run up her skirt, the city attorney agreed the mouse did it.