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A device that appeared to be a pipe bomb forced Karnes City High School to be evacuated today, allowing police to investigate the suspicious item.
A custodian making his routine rounds reported the device at about 10:30 a.m. in the boys restroom.
"It turned out that it was not a bomb," said Principal Ron Cline. "What we found is that it was a b-o-n-g, bong. Not a b-o-m-b, bomb."
The nearly 300 students returned to classes after sitting in the bleachers at the football field for about 15 minutes.
Cline said it was an understandable mistake, even for a small Central Texas town.
"When you first look at it, it looks like a pipe bomb," he said, adding it didn't obviously resemble the upright cylindrical water pipes often used for smoking marijuana. "It was kind of ominous looking. When (police) first saw it, they thought it was one, too."
The 6-inch metal pipe had caps on both ends, with clay covering a hole in the middle, officials said.