When Sonny Carter got a metal detector for Christmas, the King's Lynn, England, 7-year-old's parents likely only expected him to turn up a few wayward coins, maybe a lost key if they were lucky.
Instead, on Sonny's first journey with his new toy, he came back to the house with a World War II-era bomb.
Not immediately knowing what it was, the boy handed off the mud-caked metal object to his father, Jem. As Jem washed the dirt away from Sonny's find, he slowly realized it was no pot of gold and, heeding the advice of a friend, called the police.
"Kids always love looking for treasure so we thought it would be a fun random present for his stocking," Sonny's mother, Tracey, explained to the Telegraph. "We are dumbfounded that he discovered this on his first go."
Authorities rushed to the scene after advising Jem to keep the bomb submerged in a bucket of water, a precaution taken in case Sonny's find was a German phosphorous bomb, which ignites when dried out.
"We feel a bit silly now we know it could have potentially been dangerous but it's not often we go exploring and end up with a bomb in a bucket of water at the end of the garden," Tracey elaborated to the Daily Mail.
She continued, "There was the police and bomb disposal outside our house -- the neighbours must have thought we were mad."
According to AOL Travel, bomb disposal experts later identified the device as a "practice" bomb, which contains the same wiring as a real bomb, but none of the explosives. The military used practice bombs in WWI and WWII for training purposes since they were cheaper to manufacture and much safer.
As such, the bomb thankfully never posed a threat to the family's safety. It was taken and disposed of by authorities, according to the BBC.
PHOTO: Sonny Carter, 7, and his brother Marley, 9, found a bomb with his Christmas present metal detector.
PHOTO of the bomb:
