A day after a solar eclipse swept across Southeast Asia, Indonesian villagers thought they had been blessed by an angel fallen from heaven when a beautiful doll washed up on a beach.
Reports of a holy offering spread like wildfire through the community, after one of their number found the doll when he was fishing off the coast.
The expectation of divine blessing was increased as solar eclipses have a deeply spiritual significance in Indonesia.
In Great Britain we are not so easily amazed and associate eclipses with special editions of Blue Peter.
On the island where the Komodo dragon lives, when the sun became obscured by the moon, locals thought that a chariot had raced across the sky and blocked out our star and the gods sent a celestial being to bring good tidings, or some such nonsense, who cares?
The doll was real, no doubt about that.
The man who found it took it to his home in Kalupapi village, where it was treated with the reverence and respect that it deserved.
It was treated as an angel and given a fresh change of clothes and a nice new headscarf to wear every day and pictures showed it sitting up in a chair, all life-like but inanimate, like something from a child's bedroom in a Stephen King film.
When the story of the heavenly marionette started to spread - that it was sent from the gods, that it cried and had human characteristics - police feared that social unrest might ensue so they went over to take a peek.
What they saw when they got there was a doll all right, but not any old doll, because this was a speciality figurine.
No ordinary puppet was this. This was a dolly with a unique purpose.
This was a blow up erotic aid. What they had dressed up in their finest finery was in fact an inflatable sex doll.
The police explained that the villagers were simple people, they had no television, they had no internet and so their minds had not become sullied by the outer reaches of modern perversions.
After investigating, the officers confiscated the doll and took it to the local police station, a move they said was intended to stop false rumours from spreading.
Plus, they didn't want anyone else having a go.