Internet auctions often turn up interesting items being found hidden within the original item sold. Last month, a laptop bought on eBay had a DVD containing Secret Service information hidden under the keyboard and the machine itself was encrypted to smithereens. That turned out well, but it's not always harmless data storage devices that surface.

A couple living in Verden, in the northern part of Germany, bought a stroller online from somebody living in Hamburg, but when the two got home they found in a side pocket of the pram a pistol, a 9 mm Sig Sauer. Further details were not disclosed by the German police, but the popular guess is that the gun was a Beretta, one of the most commonly found handguns ever produced by the US representative of the Swiss / German manufacturing company Swiss Arms AG.

Tracking back the original seller of the stroller, the authorities have recently found out that they would get no help from the 39-year-old man for a simple reason: "he said it didn't belong to him," according to a report on Wednesday. A full search of his house and perimeter was conducted, but it revealed no useful information, the gun seemed to have been zapped into the side pocket by magic.

There's no joke to be made here, as this might have turned into a potentially dangerous situation for both the parents and the children, should they have been less careful and would have left the handgun with a loaded clip where it was. But if there was a joke, it most definitely must be in the area of the childhood of either mobsters or GI Joes that we all see on TV being awarded medals. The soldiers, not the mobsters, don't get lost between the lines.