They don’t just grow cotton down south. A North Carolina sheriff’s deputy investigating a complaint stumbled across an opium poppy field worth an estimated $500 million, officials said.

CLAREMONT, N.C. -- A field of poppy plants that could be used to make opium was discovered in North Carolina and had an estimated value of $500 million, a sheriff tells CBS affiliate WBTV.

In February, hundreds of swans began arriving at the poppy field near Komárno in Slovakia, local media outlet RTVS reported. The birds—estimated to number more than 200—were initially ...