A Vermont cannabis farmer has attracted some unwanted attention from his community and neighbors due to some unconventional employees on his cannabis farm: 30 ducks of all shapes, sizes and breeds.

Jason Struthers of Essex Junction, Vermont grows 100 licensed cannabis plants at his property. He uses duck manure to fertilize those plants after he bought them to use as meat but opted to let them hang out a while instead. 

“I actually bought the ducks initially to use them as meat. But I became attached to them too quickly and didn’t want to slaughter them all,” Struthers said to MyNBC5. “And I was also very new to the process and didn’t really understand it. So I just incorporated it into a permaculture.”

Struthers told High Times the duck manure is more useful to him than other fertilizer options because of the speed at which it’s ready to use in his garden. He said this came in handy particularly during the COVID-19  pandemic when supplies across all economic sectors were scarce and highly inflated.

“I have created a duck permaculture. Duck manure is one of the few that can be added directly to gardens without composting or fermentation,” Struthers said. “I’ve been able to create the vast majority of my organic fertilizer needs with the ducks. During COVID, organic fertilizers (everything actually) [were] scarce and extremely expensive. I was able to avoid all that with my ducks.”

Struthers has over seven varieties of ducks now and his cannabis farm appears to be running strong. However, some of his neighboring community members have voiced concerns both to Struthers and to community leaders about both the smell of the cannabis and the sound of the ducks. 

“I have ducks of several different varieties. Pekin, Muscovy, Khaki Campbell, Cayuga, Poofy Heads, Swedish Blue, and hybrids of each that have interbred,” Struthers told High Times. “My neighbors want me to move because they are very sensitive to smell and sound. They don’t like my cannabis or my ducks.”

According to MyNBC5, Struthers cannabis farm is in a bit of a gray area because you’re technically not allowed to have a “farm” in his neighborhood. Struthers lives in an R-1 zone, which does not allow for farms, but his cannabis cultivation license originally protected him from having to relocate his ducks in a ruling by the Essex Junction Development Review Board. 

However, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture officially designated Struthers’ property a farm in May of this year. This caused the review board to reverse their decision during a review of the case in September. They told Struthers he could keep his cannabis plants, but the ducks had to go. 

One of Struthers neighbors who is currently involved in litigation against Struthers and his mallard companions told MyNBC5 that Struthers’ cannabis farm has made life rather unpleasant for those living around him. 

“It really impacts us just not being able to enjoy our outside, you know, our lot. We can enjoy the inside, mostly. But if we go outside, then we’re subject to the smells, the noises,” said Wille Padnos, Struthers’ neighbor, to MyNBC5. 

Both Struthers and Padnos reportedly filed appeals in response to the review board’s decision. Struthers filed an appeal to keep his ducks and Padnos filed an appeal to make Struthers move his cannabis farm and the ducks somewhere else entirely. 

Struthers has not yet given up on his ducks. According to MyNBC5, the process of going through both appeals in court could take months until the fate of the ducks and the weed has been decided. However, the court could decide to fine Struthers as much as $200 per day while the proceedings take place if he opts to keep his ducks. 

“H.270 was specifically tailored to protect people like me from municipalities like the City Of Essex Junction. They can not make me stop Cannabis farming unless the legislation is changed,” Struthers said. “The city council recently drafted a letter to representatives, asking to do just that. I will be writing to the same legislators, asking not only to maintain the protections H.270 provides to small cultivators, but to strengthen them.”

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A Federal Register notice published on Feb. 23 explains how illegal cannabis grows in California are harmful to spotted owls, which are native to California. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) agency proposed the addition of two distinct population segments (DPS) of California Spotted Owl to be added to the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (which turns 50 years old in 2023). This includes a Coastal-Southern California DPS, which FWS proposes to be listed as endangered, and the Sierra Nevada DPS, which FWS proposes to be listed as threatened.

Among the FWS’s recommendations to help preserve the habitat of these particular spotted owls, FWS calls for action to reduce risk of wildfires (such as prescribed burns), target habitat management and restoration to help conserve the species, and improved cleanup after illegal cannabis grows.

“Management or cleanup activities that remove toxicants and other chemicals from trespass cannabis cultivation sites in California spotted owl habitat,” FWS wrote. “Cleanup of these sites may involve activities that may cause localized, short-term disturbance to California spotted owls, as well as require limited removal of some habitat structures valuable to California spotted owls (e.g., hazard trees that may be a suitable nest site).”

The FWS analyzed potential threats to these owls, such as parasites caused by climate change, extreme weather events, and more. In one scenario, the agency addressed the ongoing issue with high cannabis cultivator fees. “There will likely continue to be an increase in demand for marijuana, which may increase illegal grow sites using anticoagulant rodenticides in California if the costs of buying land and acquiring/maintaining permits to legalize a grow operation are too high,” the agency wrote.

Furthermore, the agency notes that anticoagulant rodenticide has increased with the rise in illegal cannabis operations. “A comparison of marijuana cultivation site likelihood with northern spotted owl suitable habitat found almost 50 percent overlap between the two,” the agency stated. “Although the number of illegal marijuana growing operations within the California spotted owl’s range is unknown, considering the number of illegal marijuana growing operations found throughout the State, there are likely thousands within the California spotted owl’s range.”

Law enforcement is regularly investigating and shutting down illegal cannabis grows, but FWS notes that their job is only to shut down the operation. “… there is currently no standardized clean-up protocol and a limited amount of funding to ensure removal of all rodenticides.”

Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office Field Supervisor Michael Fris is hopeful that these FWS recommendations will help restore this population of owls. “Our goal is to help the California spotted owl recover across its range,” said Fris. “Ongoing collaboration with a number of partners will result in positive conservation gains and put this species on the road to recovery.”

The impact of illegal cannabis grows has negatively affected many other species and habitats as well. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has previously targeted illegal grows during the summer growing season, both in 2022 as well as in 2021. Specifically, the waterways which countless animals rely on, such as salamanders, frogs, and salmon, have been threatened both due to drought, as well as illegal cannabis growers often divert water to grow their crops.

Cannabis grows are illegally using water and polluting groundwater in areas like San Bernardino County too. Efforts have been made to counter the water being taken and contaminated, according to Assemblymember Tom Lackey, who is a resident in the southern California high desert. “To any of those who are engaged in the illicit grows: I want you to know there’s a collective effort, and we’re coming after you,” Lackey said. “You come after a very sacred thing: our community. You come after our desert, and you’re stealing our water. You’re poisoning our land, and enough is enough.”

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In a scheme straight out of the Middle Ages, authorities at the Pacific Institution in Abbotsford, a correctional facility about 50 miles away from Vancouver, “reported capturing a pigeon carrying a tiny backpack filled with illicit drugs” in the prison yard late last month, according to Yahoo.

Yahoo reports that a “tiny fabric backpack tied to the pigeon contained crystal meth,” and that guards at the prison “spotted the bird and its cargo on Dec. 29 in one of the facility’s recreation yards.”

“It was spotted by correctional officers, I believe, and security intelligence officers when the officers were doing their standard patrols around and throughout the unit and institution, that’s when they initially spotted the bird with the package on it,” John Randle, a spokesperson for the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, said, as quoted by Yahoo. “The officers then set up a trap to capture it.”

The Canadian Broadcasting Company has more on the daring capture: 

“Officers were standing in one of the fenced inmate unit yards, which prisoners use regularly for hanging out, playing games or just getting some fresh air. Then the officers noticed something strange: a grey bird with a small package on its back. ‘From my understanding, it was tied to it in a similar fashion as like a little backpack,’ Randle said. The officers moved in. ‘They had to corner it,’ Randle said. ‘You can imagine how that would look, trying to catch a pigeon.’ After ‘a lengthy period of time,’ the officers apprehended the bird, removed its cargo and set it free. Randle said the package contained about 30 grams of crystal meth, which he described as a ‘fairly substantial’ amount of the intensely addictive stimulant. ‘It’s definitely scary with the fact that it was crystal meth that was found on the bird, because that causes a whole lot of problems,’ he added. Corrections Canada confirmed in an email it is investigating, but would not provide further details.”

There is precedent for this sort of fowl play.

In 2017, customs officials in Kuwait captured a pigeon that was also carrying drugs in a miniature backpack.

“A total of 178 pills were found in the fabric pocket attached to its back,” the BBC reported at the time, citing the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Ra’i.

“The bird was caught near the customs building in Abdali, close to the border with Iraq,” the BBC said. “An al-Rai journalist said the drugs were a form of ketamine, an anaesthetic also used as an illegal party drug. Abdullah Fahmi told the BBC that customs officials already knew pigeons were being used to smuggle drugs, but this was the first time they had caught a bird in the act.”

There was a similar story out of Argentina that same year, with police there shooting and killing “a carrier pigeon as it flew into a prison, then found a stash of cannabis and other contraband in a tiny backpack sewn to its feathers,” the British newspaper The Independent reported at the time.

“Officers at the Colonia jail in Santa Rosa, La Pampa, became suspicious after noticing the bird flying back and forth into the building over a number of days,” the newspaper reported. “After downing it, they discovered 7.5 grams of cannabis as well as 44 pills of the sedative Rivotril and a USB stick.”

“The method is also the most common way to sneak drugs into the Federal Penitentiary jail in Buenos Aires, the authorities said,” The Independent added.

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Birds Aren’t Real is a conspiracy movement that’s exactly what it sounds like: the concept that birds aren’t real, and they’ve been replaced by robotic replicas, installed by the “deep state.” But founder Peter McIndoe, 24, broke character on CBS 60 Minutes on May 1 to explain that his conspiracy theory is simply a parody and that his movement is more of a social experiment—and it’s working like a charm.

Bird Aren’t Real slogans and imagery appear on billboards, bumper stickers, and even places such as an NCAA men’s basketball national championship game. The website sells “Truther Gear” like crazy. Birds Aren’t Real now boasts over 1 million devoted followers and over 400,000 followers on Instagram.

“Once a preventative cause, our initial goal was to stop the genocide of real birds,” the organization states on its website. “Unfortunately this was unsuccessful, and the government has since replaced every living bird with robotic replicas. Now our movement’s prerogative is to make everyone aware of this fact.”

The organization provides a faux history of supposedly launching in 1973 after learning of a secret C.I.A. operation to wipe out birds dating back to the 1950s.

Despite the level of absurdity, the movement attracted actual followers who are convinced birds aren’t real. On April 14, profiled in The Guardian, McIndoe said the “absurdity is getting more intense.” McIndoe realized his own movement had become larger than he could control. “I remember seeing videos of people chanting: ‘Birds aren’t real,’ at high-school football games; and seeing graffiti of ‘birds aren’t real.’ At first, I thought: ‘This is crazy,’ but then I wondered: ‘What is making this resonate with people?’”

Sometimes, he joined in on the fun himself and fanned the flames. “If it flies? It spies! If it flies? It spies!” McIndoe chanted at a Birds Aren’t Really rally in Hollywood, California. “If it flies, it spies!” they chanted in return. 

“Birds aren’t real!” McIndoe shouted. About 200 protesters joined McIndoe at that rally, but he admitted that some of the protesters were part of the plan.

Keeping a straight face is part of the game. “I wake up every morning, just like you do. I brush my teeth; I wash my car, and I have an avid disbelief in avian beings,” McIndoe said with a straight face on WREG’s Live At 9 in 2019.

On 60 Minutes

Sharon Alfonsi of the CBS News show 60 Minutes interviewed the founder of Birds Aren’t Real, profiling McIndoe and his bizarrely successful social experiment. McIndoe broke character again, after doing the same in an interview with The New York Times in December 2021.

A clip of the interview generated 1.1 million views and counting on YouTube.

Following the election of Donald Trump, McIndoe noticed that at Trump protests for the Women’s March, the events would attract random counter protesters for various movements. The world felt so unstable to him that he thought he’d join in on the fun. McIndoe and some friends went to a protest in Memphis, Tennessee in 2017 and thought it would be funny to start shouting random absurd slogans such as “Birds aren’t real!!” Friends Claire Chronis, Cameron Kasky, and Connor Gaydos are now part of the movement.

“So it’s taking this concept of misinformation and almost building a little safe space to come together within it and laugh at it rather than be scared by it,” McIndoe said. “And accept the lunacy of it all and be a bird truther for a moment in time when everything’s so crazy.”

Weed Conspiracies

Misinformation affects us all, which is why High Times profiled “Eight of The Craziest Weed Conspiracies That Might Be True” in 2020. 

One of the most prevailing conspiracy theories about cannabis is that it can shorten penis length by a centimeter or that lowers sperm count. Yet, you can find peer-reviewed studies that both say cannabis can negatively impact sperm count, and a Harvard-led study showing that cannabis is linked with higher sperm concentrations. 

But the biggest cannabis conspiracy of all is the racist misinformation campaign led by people like Harry J. Anslinger. Angslinger’s conspiracy, however, had real and dangerous implications, leading to people being targeted.

Today, the rise of conspiracies is fueled by “digital cults” like QAnon, with people who are convinced that Satanic, cannibal politicians are indeed real, that celebrities secretly take Adrenochrome harvested from children, or that Bill Gates orchestrated COVID. 

Is Bird’s Aren’t Real any more absurd than those conspiracy theories?

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