HANCOCK COUNTY - In the past few months, county narcotics agents have been pulling wild weed from weird places.
Several residents have reported strange-looking plants growing along roadsides, in ditches or even under a stop sign on a busy street.
The mysterious weeds are actually, just that, weed - marijuana, pot, herb, chronic, maryjane. Whatever one wants to call it, wild cannabis plants are growing naturally in some parts of the county.
"This is the first time I've ever seen marijuana like this, just growing along the side of the road," said Matt Carl, who runs the Hancock County Narcotics Division.
Agents believe seeds were scattered when Hurricane Katrina sacked the homes of some ganja-growing residents in the vicinity.
The ditch weeds are not exactly "wild," Carl said, because someone likely knows how they ended up in strange places.
"This stuff didn't just happen to grow there," Carl said. "It's coming from nearby houses where it was growing when the storm washed it out."
But Cheech and Chong are unlikely to bounce out from behind a debris pile claiming ownership of the roadside pot, so agents are unable to charge anyone for harvesting the stray crops, although the division has made several recent arrests of suspects allegedly farming pot at their homes.
Hancock agents say the stalks they are finding are usually little more than a foot tall, and many experts say dope smokers are more likely to get nauseated than high from the scrawny plants.
Most hard-core herb lovers know the roadside weed is low quality, but some dealers will often strip leaves from the stalks and mix them with a much-higher grade of cultivated marijuana.
"The plants we're finding are nothing that looks healthy or like it's being taken care of," Carl said. "Most of what was spread after the storm was probably killed by the saltwater."
Carl says the ditch dope is not like kudzu, which spread unfettered once released into the wild. He said the narcotics division has eradicated just a handful of naturally occurring marijuana plants.
"We've gotten calls about some growing near a ditch, some under a stop sign and a few others, but it's nothing that's taking over the county," Carl said.
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