Scarecrow 999: A member of the public alerted police over a man ‘trapped in a ditch’ (Picture: Newsteam / SWNS)

Talk about wasting police time.

When officers received an emergency call about a man trapped upside down in a ditch in a sleepy Oxfordshire village they quickly rushed to the scene.

But they were in ‘no mood for laughing’ after the man reportedly in ‘distress’ outside The Plough pub in Little Bourton last Sunday turned out to be a scarecrow.

Landlord Sam Harrison, 60, created his man trapped in a molehill masterpiece as an entry for the village charity scarecrow competition.


‘Our scarecrow was one of 14 made by villagers in Little Bourton for a competition to raise money for a cancer charity,’ he explained.



‘It was a man fallen down a mole hole and a giant mole.

‘The first I knew about the police being called was when someone said there were two officers in the car park.

‘They said someone had reported a man fallen down a hole.’

A spokeswoman for Thames Valley Police confirmed they received an emergency call about a man lying in a ditch outside the pub.

Police could not confirm if the caller had been in the pub beforehand.