(UPI) Landscapers working in the back yard of a Virginia home made a surprising discovery: a suspected cannonball dating from the Civil War.

Jasin Singh, a real estate agent with Innovation Properties, said landscapers were working in the yard of a home on Frederick Street in Staunton when they uncovered what they initially thought to be a strange rock.

"One of them ended up rinsing it off and we saw that it was a metal ball, and as soon as I saw that I thought, 'Oh my god, this is a cannonball,'" Singh told WHSV-TV.

Singh said he had recently dealt with a similar discovery at another home, so he knew what to do.

"I had something similar actually happen up in Front Royal and so that is why I was kind of bit more familiar with what to kind of do and I am thankful that I have some of that experience," he said.

Staunton Fire & Rescue responded to the home and ended up calling Virginia State Police to cart the suspected explosive away.

"We assumed it was a Civil War-era cannonball because it can be very unstable, so we treated it as it was a live ordinance," said Perry Weller, deputy chief of community risk reduction for Staunton Fire & Rescue.

A Jacksonville, Fla., man was faced with a similar situation recently when his dog unearthed an object that turned out to be a decades-old military bomb in his back yard.

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