Estate Sale Box Held Live Grenades, Austerin Watch Confirms

At roughly the second bell after noon on Monday, the Austerin City Watch was allegedly called to an estate sale, where a shopper had found live grenades in a box of old odds and ends. The grenades were about eighty years old and, per the Watch's boom-wardens, very much live.

The shopper, who has not been named and whom I will not be inventing a pun for, had bought several boxes of what the seller called "miscellany." One of them held rusty, pineapple-shaped iron. The shopper allegedly thought it was decor. Then the shopper allegedly looked at it a second time.

'I came for a lamp,' said Dorrin Pebblewick, a neighbor who was eating a roasted chestnut cone at the time. 'Everybody came for a lamp. Then the whole street got very polite and walked backward.' The estate sale was allegedly paused. The lamp was allegedly sold anyway, which tells you everything about estate sales.

The Watch's boom-wardens arrived and confirmed what the shopper's face had already confirmed: live grenades, left over from an old war, stability unknown. The Austerin Watch Guild, which represents the city's officers, posted about it afterward. 'Handling 80-year-old explosives with unknown stability is dangerous, precise work,' the Guild wrote. Then it added, 'Not your typical estate sale find.' I have covered the Lower City docks for years and I have never seen a Watch statement this accurate.

Nobody was hurt. Nobody was arrested. The grenades were allegedly seized, carried out with great gentleness, and removed from the scene. Where they went is not public, but I assume somewhere with thick walls and no lamps.

Some questions remain. How long did the box sit in that attic? Who tagged it? And how much was it marked down? The seller has not said. (Ooh. There was a really nice brass candlestick on the sale table in the sketch the Watch released. Anyway.) The sale's listing allegedly called the box 'good for a weekend project,' and the Watch would like a word about that.

Advice from the Lower City: if the box ticks, hums, or has a pin, put it down. If it does none of these things, put it down anyway. And please do not take it home to see whether it still works. Allegedly, someone always does.

— Skritch, on the beat (allegedly)