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PINAR, Argentina — “The mice ate the marijuana” was an excuse no more believable than “the dog ate my homework” for authorities in Argentina, where eight police officers have been fired over the disappearance of around 1,200 pounds of pot.

The officers in Pinar, roughly 40 miles west of Buenos Aires, argued that the missing drugs had been “eaten by mice” in the warehouse for impounded drugs, the Guardian reports. Some 13,220 pounds of marijuana had been registered there two years earlier and investigators found that the total was more than half a ton short.

Forensic experts testified that it was very unlikely that even a large number of rodents could have consumed so much marijuana.

A spokesperson for the judge said, “Buenos Aires University experts have explained that mice wouldn’t mistake the drug for food, and that if a large group of mice had eaten it, a lot of corpses would have been found in the warehouse.”

The shortfall was noticed by the new police commissioner, who notified the internal affairs division. In a hearing next month, a judge will try to determine whether the marijuana went missing because of negligence.

USA Today notes that although the internal affairs investigators in Argentina decided that rodents could not have consumed the missing pot, police in Wichita in 2013 said mice had managed to chew through evidence bags containing marijuana. (Police in Colorado have been told they don’t need to return seized weed, even when it’s legal.)

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