Unwelcomed Suprises

I found an old box of bullets in a neglected closet in my house this weekend.  Not kidding.

I’ll first clarify that Christophe does not hunt, so they do not belong to him.  He bought the house 12 years from a widower who left everything in it from dishes to furniture and all stuff in between.  Christophe has sifted through most of it, but a dilapidated built in closet dating from Napoleon’s era was never fully explored.  Its frame and mantel were badly damaged and the left-side door could not be opened without damaging it further.  After long deliberation, Christophe finally decided to remove the heavy oak doors and repair the damages, which ended up being so extend that part of the old frame had to simply be removed and reconstructed.

My task in all this was to clean out the closet once the doors were off.  I had shoved some clothes in there along with things I don’t use often, but over half of the closet was filled with stuff we have never seen before.  Among other things, we found a coffee pot, a butcher’s block, a stack of pans, serving trays, and an odd little box tucked away in the corner.  I froze when I opened it. 

I think my heart skipped a beat as I looked down and found over a dozen hunting bullets nestled in the tiny tin.  We have no idea when they were put there, but the newspaper lining the closet shelves was from 1969.  Gulp, that’s over 40 years ago.  My mind flashed to something about old bullets (or was that dynamite?) being extremely fragile and I acted as if I had a bomb in my hands.  Christophe was less apprehensive than me, and thought they were harmless, but we still had no idea what to do with them. Should we soak them or throw them away?  Could they spontaneously go off if jostled?  Should we tell someone?

I decided to call a friend who hunts and ask him for advice.  Once I rectified my vocabulary error, (“No, no I found bullets, (cartouche) not a gun (carabine) in the closet”) I was reassured they were harmless, but was told to put them in a safe place until he can come over and get them.  I’m thinking about putting them back in the closet.  They passes over 40 peaceful years there, and this way they won’t be staring at me from the kitchen counter as they currently are doing.  Who knows, maybe that is how they got in the closet in the first place.