Crop circles baffle some, bemuse others

A dairy farmer near Howick, Que., is trying to figure out how a series of mysterious circles appeared in his barley crop.

John Peddie chuckles at all the attention his field is drawing. "I've no idea how they were made, but they're certainly well made. It's a mystery to me," he said.

Peddie says, however, that he doesn't believe anything extraterrestrial is responsible such as flying saucers. Neither does Andr Bordeleau, a lecturer at the Montreal Planetarium. He says the circles are man-made; someone used a plank to flatten the grain.

It's a repeat of a hoax started decades ago by two artists in England. But Bordeleau admits there isn't a lot he can do to stop people from believing UFOs are responsible.

"That's why The X Files was nine years on TV," Bordeleau says. "People are interested in that kind of stuff. They'd like to believe that there's unexplained events, that there's a paranormal aspect of their lives. It makes it exciting, I guess."

Bordeleau notes the crop circles have appeared suspiciously close to the release of a new Hollywood movie based on the practice.