A German pensioner feared a monster courgette he found in his garden was an unexploded World War Two bomb and called the police.

The 5kg (11-pound) courgette had probably been thrown over a hedge into the 81 year old’s garden, police said.

Luckily no evacuation was required in Bretten, a town near Karlsruhe in south-west Germany.

The 40cm (16-inch) vegetable – also called zucchini – “really did look like a bomb”, police said.

Once police had reassured him following the early morning call-out, the pensioner disposed of the courgette himself.

Many unexploded bombs dropped by the British RAF or US Air Force have been unearthed in Germany, usually during construction work.

On 3 September 65,000 people were evacuated from their homes in Frankfurt, so that a 1.4-tonne British bomb could be defused. It was the biggest evacuation in post-war German history for an unexploded bomb alert.