The call came in at 4:47 p.m. Friday. Hooligans - two of them - were spotted at Harding School brandishing what looked like pistols. Someone heard shots.

Within minutes, at least four police vehicles screamed down Harrison Boulevard. The first thing police did when they reached the school at 510 N.W. 31st St., Officer Ryan Eaton said in his report, was surround the area. They didn't know what they were dealing with.

They soon found out. The purported pistoleros were already in the principal's office after being rounded up by school personnel. Their weapon was confiscated. It was a potato gun. The kids, ages 14 and 15, were charged with disorderly conduct and unlawful use of a weapon and sent home with their parents.

Criminal charges for a potato gun?

The incident might have raised some eyebrows, but Lt. Dave Henslee, a spokesman for the Corvallis Police Department, said potato guns are no trifling matter. They're dangerous, he said. And not just in that "you'll-shoot-your-eye-out-kid" sort of way.

Some so-called "spud guns" are just little plastic toys using gentle air pressure to shoot small shards of potato. Henslee said many other homemade spud guns, like the one Friday's suspects had devised, use explosive material. In this case, he said, the boys were igniting hairspray with a barbecue lighter.

They weren't just shooting potato shards, either. Henslee said they were firing whole apples across the school grounds. "Obviously, in that situation, the chances of damaging property or hurting people is pretty high," Henslee said.

The spud gun was so loud, in fact, that the witness who reported the incident thought the boys were using a shotgun, he added.

The bottom line is that firing spud guns - like shooting arrows or igniting any kind of combustible material - is illegal within the city limits. It's dangerous for the public as well as the people using the weapons, Henslee said. "Someone could get hurt."