You don't see crop circles that often. Unless you live in Cache County.
For the second time this week and the third time in 11 months, local residents were stopping by the side of the road and even renting small planes to view an unusual formation of flattened barley.Three men found the latest crop design in Calvin and Carol Funk's field, a mile north of Crow Hill, about noon Friday after hearing that a California-based pilot saw the figure from the air earlier in the week. The man spotted the crop circle in Funk's field while observing a similar design four miles to the south in Smithfield.
That design was discovered Sunday morning by farmer Gary Hansen. Several hundred passersby have stopped to take a look since then.
"It's getting more annoying to me every day," Hansen, 42, said Friday.
To others, it's getting more interesting.
The formation found on Funk's Springside Farm is larger and slightly more complex than the Hansen crop circle. And it is unusual, in the United States at least, for more than one crop circle to appear in the same vicinity in such a short time span.
The first Cache County crop circle was discovered last August in Providence, about nine miles south of the Hansen formation.
"We knew there'd be more," said Con Olsen, 39, of Wellsville, one of the first to step inside the Funk formation Friday. "I think there's going to be more and more. I feel there's something coming - earth changes, something.
"Pictures are the universal language, and they're here for us to figure out."
Some have suggested crop circles are nothing more than a hoax or a prank, and two Brits did confess to making numerous "fake" crop circles in England several years ago. Hansen figured last year's Providence formation was probably just a joke.
But then it happened to him.
"It's mind-boggling," he said as he explored the Funk formation along with his son and daughter Friday afternoon. "It's almost too perfect to be a piece of ground equipment or a human because there aren't any tracks."
Hansen was relieved to learn he wasn't the only Cache County farmer with a mysterious design woven into his barley.
"I feel better now. I was starting to wonder, `Why are they picking on me?' It's a relief in one way, but I'd still like to know what caused it."
Olsen, Tres Dixon and Ryan Layton said there were no trails leading into Funk's field Friday before they entered to examine the design, which features a trident-like symbol, a circle inside a circle and a W-shaped tail.
"It was kind of neat, I've got to tell you, to walk in there for the first time," said Layton, who will collect plant samples from the Funk formation and send them to former University of Michigan professor W.C. Levengood.
Levengood and his associates studied samples Layton took from last year's Providence crop circle and determined it was "authentic," meaning it was not likely created by human pranksters. Levengood's analysis showed the barley within that circle had undergone structural changes created by some kind of high-heat energy, as has been the case with other crop circles he's studied.
His theory is that crop circles, especially prevalent in southern England, are formed by a natural weather phenomenon - an energy vortex that emits microwave-like radiation.
Layton, Hansen and others observed Friday that the nodes on the flattened plants inside the Funk formation appeared darker than those on the neighboring stalks outside the design.
Layton said he spoke with Levengood's assistant, Nancy Talbott, and she said the research team has been inundated with samples from six fresh crop designs in the past few weeks.
"This is going on all over the country," Layton said.
Everywhere the Hansens have gone this week, people have made jokes about extraterrestrial visitors.
Maegan Hansen, a 15-year-old sophomore at Sky View High School, said she can't say for sure what created the crop circle - and $500 worth of crop damage - in the field just across U.S. 91 from her home. But she does know she heard strange noises about 12:30 a.m. Sunday - sounds she now thinks may have had something to do with the crop circle's creation.
"It was like two beeps or a buzz," said Maegan, who was in the basement watching TV at the time. "It was like if you put a beep and a hum tone together. It was weird. It wasn't like anything I'd heard before."
Janet Funk, who lives a few hundred yards away from the most recently discovered crop design, wasn't worried about what she might hear. She was more concerned about what she might see - like dozens of people trampling her father-in-law's barley.
Two newspaper photographers took to the air Friday, and Funk was afraid the curious would show up in droves Saturday. Layton, who asked the Funks' permission before entering the field, was afraid his sample collecting would be hampered by human visitors.
Todd and Lisa Weaklend, of Ogden, spent two days this week taking samples from the Hansen formation and will send them on to Levengood. The Weaklends measured the formation's circles at 74 and 31 feet in diameter.
Layton had yet to take measurements of the Funk design, but said it could be 300 feet from end to end - longer than the 258-foot Providence formation.
The Cache County Sheriff's Office was not investigating either of the crop circles Friday. Deputies briefly looked into the Providence formation last year and determined pranksters, and possibly gophers, were probably to blame.
Neither humans nor rodents were apprehended.