A concerned pensioner alerted police to what he thought was a Second World War bomb in his garden – but the discovery turned out to be a little less terrifying.

Officers called to the property in Bretten, near the southwestern German city of Karlsruh, instead found the 81-year-old's discovery to be a particularly large courgette.

In a statement on Friday, officers said the vegetable, which measured 40cm in length, "really did look very much like a bomb".

The dark-coloured courgette weighed about 5kg and police believe it may have been thrown over into the man's garden over a hedge.

Unexploded wartime bombs are often found at German building sites and can cause a lot of disruption, with authorities often forced to evacuate buildings and nearby areas while they are defused.


Image: Authorities brought in armed vehicles to assist in Frankfurt in September

In September, about 60,000 people had to leave their homes in Frankfurt as explosives experts defused a huge wartime bomb.

Residents were ordered to leave after the unexploded 1.8-ton British device was found during construction work in a wealthy suburb of the city.

It was Germany's biggest evacuation since the Second World War.