A man was left stunned when a DIY job revealed there was more than 160 bowling balls in his back garden -and he had no idea beforehand.
David Olson, 33, was smashing up the back step in his garden on July 1, when he spotted a black ball in the sand.
As he dug deeper, he discovered more and more balls - with a total of 160 discovered so far.
Describing the moment, David of Norton Stores, in Michigan, told local station WLTX he “felt like a palaeontologist” while dusting off the balls for clues.
“It became mind-blowing,” he added. “A few of them look like alien eggs.”
After sharing his initial haul of 50 bowling balls online, Olson says he has now discovered a total of 160 in the ground so far, but there are more underground.
He told the Detroit Free Press : "That was one of the bowling balls. I didn't think a whole lot of it. I was kind of assuming maybe there were just a couple in there just to fill in.
"The deeper I got into it the more I realised it was just basically an entire gridwork of them making up the weight in there."
"I was actually a little happy about that because it's a little easier to roll bowling balls out of the way than to move the sand and figure out where to put all that."
The dad-of-three discovered that they were made by Brunswick Bowling Products, who verified that the balls were made in the 1950s, and were safe to dispose of.
Olson said there used to be a bowling ball plant in nearby Muskegon, and ex-employees told him they used to take scrapped balls to use as an alternative to sand.
He now plans to use the balls in sculptures, or as edging for his landscape, and eight have been donated to a local church for a bowling ball cannon.
The dad of-three has also started a GoFundMe to cover the costs of building a new deck.
Get the news you want straight to your inbox. Sign up for a Mirror newsletter here.
