Talk about playing with fire.
The beached iron ball pictured above turned out to be a World War II sea mine possibly packed with explosives.
Families in Eigg, an island off Scotland, thought the iron ball was just a flotation device.
It was even a part of bon fires and family picnics.
However, when strong winds blew away sand beneath the metal object and revealed its full explosive casing intact, a bomb disposal team rushed to the beach site and frantically evacuated nearby homes.
Ben Cormack, whose father lives only 100 yards from the beach, made the discovery.
He said: “The winter storms removed about a foot of the sand’s depth and revealed what looked like a sea mine.”
“It had always been presumed to be an old wartime buoy. There have been many beach fires around it.
“I couldn’t be sure so I took a picture and emailed it to the police.”
Within an hour, the police phoned Ben to say that the Navy Bomb Disposal Unit decided they needed to come and look at it.
According to Ben, “The sergeant in charge was at first very concerned as the explosive casing appeared to be intact, which would contain around 300lb of high explosives.
“Luckily, when they started cleaning it, they found the casing to be full of sand, not explosives.
“To be sure, the team performed several small controlled explosions on the mine to break it apart.”