Casual yard work took a dangerous twist for Stephanie Joy Mitchell when she found what may have been a Civil War-era weapon in her Vancouver backyard.

Mitchell, 48, was digging up stones to move them to a project in her front yard. She picked up a stone that was particularly smooth, round and heavy — then she realized it wasn’t a stone at all.

She turned it over in her hands and noticed a cork plugging up the side. She called her mother over and together they realized: “This looks like a cannonball,” said Mitchell, a graphic designer and artist.

Mitchell carefully set it down, snapped a photo on her phone and texted her neighbor to warn her of what she had found. She then called the Vancouver police, and it wasn’t long before officers came knocking.

“The police take one look at the t

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