WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A New Zealand man had a novel idea when he found himself in a queue at a service station counter with no money, could he pay with marijuana instead?

Unfortunately he didn’t get a chance to discover whether the attendant would accept his offer, as the person behind him in the queue was a police officer, the Dominion Post newspaper reported.

The man’s attempt to buy two packets of M&Ms and a packet of potato chips to satisfy his “munchies” was caught short when he was arrested.

He must have been hungry, as he failed to notice the police patrol car sitting on the station forecourt being filled with petrol, the paper reported.

The 28-year old mechanic from the small North Island town of Carterton pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis in the Masterton District Court and was remanded for sentencing.

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Authorities in Texas have filed corpse-abuse charges against two men who allegedly removed a skull from a grave and used it as a bong.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office confirmed on Thursday that misdemeanor abuse of corpse charges have been filed in the case.

One of the men allegedly told police they dug up a grave in an abandoned cemetery in the woods, removed a head from a body and smoked marijuana using the skull as a bong.

Police found the cemetery and a grave that had been disturbed but are still investigating the rest of the story, officials said.

JERUSALEM (AFP) – High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

“As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics,” Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the “burning bush,” suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

“The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon,” he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to “see music.”

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil’s Amazon forest in 1991. “I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,” Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

CHICAGO (AFP) – Officers trying to track down a drug dealer in Ohio stumbled across two alligators guarding his back door instead.

The snipping and snapping gators were far from full-sized — one was about two feet long and the other was about four feet long — but were scary enough to make a team of tough federal marshals and Dayton, Ohio police officers call for help.

“Nobody wanted to play catch a gator,” William Taylor, supervisory deputy US Marshal, told AFP.

“We haven’t got any Crocodile Dundees on the task force,” he joked, adding that the marshals are having fun putting on fake Australian accents as he made reference to the adventurous croc hunter from the Hollywood movie.

Luckily for them, a suburban police officer moonlights as an exotic animal wrangler.

“I get called out on these all the time,” said Tim Harrison, who runs Outreach for Animals.

“Not six months ago they had a 12 foot Burmese python loose in (a drug dealer’s) house.”

When he first started collecting exotic animals in the Dayton area some 34 years ago, Harrison would probably get about six calls a year.

Now he gets 175 a year — everything from an elephant in a living room to panthers and lions roaming through the suburbs — including about a dozen alligators a year.

And he’s begun giving seminars to law enforcement officers warning them of the booby traps that await them in drug dens like venomous snakes in bags of dope.

Taylor says his officers are prepared for finding pit bulls or other aggressive dogs when they bust drug dealers but the gators were a shock.

“A lot of these guys think it’s cool to keep a tough pet,” he said. “Not a lot of drug dealers of the thug variety are going to keep a poodle.”

The gators are being cared for at a local animal shelter until a suitable home can be found for them.

Taylor’s team also seized guns, drugs and two pit bull puppies in the Monday morning raid but are still on the lookout for the drug dealer who is wanted for violating his parole.