A dog in Florida had an explosive discovery (pun intended) while digging on her owner’s backyard on Wednesday, March 20.
WJAX reports that Matthew Sims was playing with his dog, named Baby, in his backyard on 15th Street in Jacksonville, when the pooch started digging near the backyard’s fence.
Sims, who was making sure that Baby wasn’t digging and picking up anything that she wasn’t supposed to, spotted a rusted object on the ground that the pooch was digging.
The dog owner pulled up the object and quickly realized what it was — a military ordnance.
“You couldn’t tell what it was until you started to pull it up. Once I got it halfway out, I was like, ‘Oh, I know what this is, let me gently put this back down,’” Sims said.
Sims also said Baby uncovered a small piece of the unexploded military weapon and believed that it was about a foot long and weighed around 10 pounds.
“It was like buried at least six inches deep. But then like half of it or at least two inches up,” Sims said.
According to a police report, the military ordnance seemed to have been buried for some time, based on its rusting metal.
Authorities evacuated residents from the area before removing the object in Sims’ backyard.
A neighbor, Carla Smith, said she wasn’t too concerned as the explosive was being removed.
Smith tells WJAX, “We just watched. I wasn’t scared because I’ve been around people who have found artifacts in the land and stuff like that.”
“To me, it was interesting to watch. They did their thing, and they were out of here in minutes,” she continued.
Despite the mystery of how the explosive ended up in a backyard of a suburban home, Sims said he’s just happy that it was discovered and properly disposed of.
