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Great White North
Canadian woman finds brand new grenade in backyard
2008-06-24
One would scarcely be likely to find a USED grenade, at least not if it had functioned properly.
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canadian military and police are investigating after a package containing a brand new hand grenade, belonging to the army, was found in a suburban backyard, police said on Monday.
Gee, all I ever find in my backyard are beer cans, candy wrappers, and those ubiquitous plastic grocery bags (known locally as 'Wal-Mart tumbleweeds')
A woman in the Western Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta, discovered the suspicious package on Sunday and took it to her local police station, where officers told her to carefully place it on the lawn.
There probably is someone, somewhere who has to be told to handle this sort of merchandise carefully.
Police called in the bomb squad, which determined the item was a grenade, still in its packaging and belonging to the Canadian military.
Mistakenly shipped as a new puck for the Oilers.
The technicians made sure the package was secure and called military personnel in to dispose of the ordnance. 'It is quite unusual for someone to find a grenade in their backyard, especially one that hasn't been spent,' Edmonton police spokeswoman Patrycia Chalupczynska said.
How common are grenades in front yards? Is there something we don't know about the Great White North? Maybe grenades are legal there, but only in BC during the salmon run.
'We want to advise people that if they ever do find something suspicious-looking, they shouldn't touch it -- just leave it alone and call police.'
....who will tell you to pick it up and take it to the FRONT yard, apparently the proper place for grenade finds.
Posted by:Atomic Conspiracy

#12  Do they ship them with the detonators installed? Not smart.
Posted by: Deacon Blues   2008-06-24 20:56  

#11  Damn - they found our pre-invasion stockpile.
Posted by: Pappy   2008-06-24 19:16  

#10  I'll bet George W Bush put it there.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2008-06-24 18:05  

#9  Canada: America's Hat

Yes, indeed. Keeping us cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and and hiding our receding hairline. ;-)

If the grenade was in the back yard, it probably didn't just fall off a delivery truck, right? Seriously, how the heck did the thing get into a back yard?
Posted by: trailing wife    2008-06-24 17:13  

#8  Yeah, given the loss of control over it, you'd have to assume it may have been tampered with and it's safer to destroy it than to pop it back into inventory.

Consider if they cut the fuse down to almost nothing and you issued it for recruits to do live training with. It blows up 5 feet after being thrown, you'll wind up with wounded recruits and cadre.

Posted by: Silentbrick   2008-06-24 17:09  

#7  Probably a knee-jerk reaction. But not entirely unreasonable (assuming the EOD folks got a robot look at it before detonating) since it's possible with some effort to unseal the packaging, add nasties to it and reseal.
Posted by: lotp   2008-06-24 16:13  

#6  "Police called in the bomb squad, which determined the item was a grenade, still in its packaging and belonging to the Canadian military."

"called military personnel in to dispose of the ordnance"

Something I don't understand here. It was a brand new grenade still in its packaging. Why would it need to be "disposed of"? Why not just put it back into inventory?

If it was in its original packaging, it would have the serial number, manufacturer, date of manufacture, and manufacturing lot number on it. At the very least the manufacturer would know where that grenade was shipped originally.
Posted by: crosspatch   2008-06-24 15:24  

#5  Semi-seriously, I hope somebody took the lot number down. Follow that up, and it will be interesting where it leads.
Posted by: N guard   2008-06-24 14:31  

#4  How do they know it was really and truly a BRAND NEW Grenade?

did it have a 'Best before..." date on it?
did it have the "tag not to be removed under penalty of law" tag on it ( call in the mattress police, grenade division)
i wanna know?

it could have been worse, could have been another foot.
Posted by: USN,Ret.   2008-06-24 14:03  

#3  How typical of Reuters to broadcast our military secrets around the world! No one was supposed to know about this form of supply.
Posted by: Canuckistan sniper   2008-06-24 13:54  

#2  Any...ummmmmmmmmmmm...mosques in the neighborhood, hon?
Posted by: tu3031   2008-06-24 13:33  

#1  known locally as 'Wal-Mart tumbleweeds'
You Texans certainly know how to turn a phrase.
Posted by: GK   2008-06-24 12:37  

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