Bison Frise sniffs out live grenade

May 28 2009 By Mark Goode

IT'S not everyday that a bison friche finds a hand grenade 200 yards from your house.

But when Adam Squaire was walking his daughter's dog in Shepperton Rec on Friday May 15, that is what happened.

Mr Squaire was taking Dolly out for a morning stroll at 9.30am from his Glebeland Gardens home in Shepperton when he noticed his dog sniffing around, and saw a rubbery looking green object laying in the grass in the park.

He said: "We were walking along by the bush and Dolly stalled so I went to pull at her and saw it was a grenade. I think the grass had just been cut as well as the hedge which borders the allotments because it was just at the bottom of the bush.

"It wasn't dirty or anything. It didn't look like a World War II grenade, but it was rubbery with a handle which was broken a bit, and it had a yellow band round the middle just as a marking."

Adam alerted a park keeper who took it back to his office for inspection. The keeper later handed it into Staines Police Station in Kingston Road at 12.30pm and gave his details before the front counter and a number of rooms on the first floor were evacuated.

An army bomb disposal unit then picked up the grenade, which was found live after an x-ray test, and took it to Staines and Laleham cricket ground, in Worple Road, Staines, for a controlled detonation.

Mr Squair said: "I really thought it was a grenade at first, it didn't look fake, and I didn't want to take chances. I thought it could have been dummy that the army use for practice, but it wasn't supposed to be where it was. I would really like to know where it came from.

"It's not good to worry about these things, but I would be worried more if I hadn't found it because a child may have picked it up. But my wife has had so much with fun with this story, just at the sight of me and my daughter's bison friche with a pink collar and a pink lead finding a grenade."