ST. GREGOR, Sask. . If you want to stay on Calvin Michel's good side, don't ask him about that circular patch of flattened wheat in one of his fields.

After the crop circle was discovered on his farm Aug. 26, 2007, Michel and his family were snowed under by media requests for interviews and calls from paranormal buffs wanting to visit the scene of the "phenomenon."

The fact a circle showed up in a barley crop on the same field back in 2005 made the latest discovery all the more tantalizing. The circles got national press coverage. A volunteer field researcher with the Canadian Crop Circle Research Network inspected the latest circle and declared it "authentic."

Not quite.
Michel said Sunday he's learned that crop circles were a prank, pulled on him by an unnamed friend who admitted to making the circles over the past three years.

"Nobody told us it was homemade," Michel said. "There's a lot of hard feelings. We were put through the wringer."
Michel, his wife Gail and their son Evan willingly talked about the recent circle and showed it to curiosity seekers willing to make the drive 175 kilometres east of Saskatoon. Despite his embarrassment, he refuses to identify the prankster.

But some enthusiasts are reluctant to give up on the St. Gregor circles without an argument.
Bert Roach is with the tourism office in Estevan, 464 kilometres southeast of Saskatoon. He helped launch Estevan's Canadian Crop Circle Research Museum last spring, bringing together a collection of photos and documentation of Saskatchewan circles.

He said people who visited the St. Gregor circle recorded facts about it that don't appear to be explained by the actions of an unnamed hoaxer.

"It's pretty easy for someone to take responsibility if they never have to prove they have something to do with it," he said.

"If they can prove they can replicate it under the same conditions, then come forward and show us you can make one."
Calvin Michel said Sunday the unidentified friend said that, before the circles were discovered, rain erased any footprints or impressions left by the two-by-four board he used in the field.

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