Her Metal ‘Potato’ Too Hot to Be Peeled, Housewife Discovers
Dea van Hemert reached into the bag for another potato and found a pineapple--a mud-caked World War II hand grenade in working order.
“I was peeling potatoes like I do every day, and was taking them one by one from the plastic bag” Monday afternoon, Van Hemert said. “At first I didn’t know what it was, but I found out soon enough when my husband came home from work.”
Potatoes, a staple in the Netherlands, are harvested by machine, sorted by size automatically and packed in plastic bags for retail sale.
“It (the grenade) had the same size and was as heavy as a normal potato,” she said, “But when I started to peel away the mud, I suddenly felt metal.”
She said that her son, Jeroen, and daughter, Angelique, were playing in the kitchen when she discovered the grenade and that she put it aside for inspection by her husband, Kees.
He realize the danger immediately, buried it in the garden and called police.
Army bomb experts arrived at this town in eastern Holland that night, dug up the grenade and took it away.
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