DENVER -- Someone in Colorado may be missing a Mile High Christmas present.

The Tuesday before Christmas, a toy shop owner in Southern California said he received a 2-foot-tall teddy bear stuffed with marijuana addressed to a man in Colorado.

"It was a big blue bear that had three big bags of pot stuffed inside it," Eli Pavoni, a holiday employee at Toy Town, told TheDenverChannel.com Tuesday.

"I was like: 'Oh My God,'" said Toy Town owner Joshua Vecchione.

Vecchione said the pot-bellied bear arrived in an overnight package addressed to a "David Lang" in Colorado. He couldn't make out the street address or town. It was postmarked from Thousand Oaks, Calif., with a return address for the Ladera Ranch, Calif., toy shop.

But a California law enforcement source told TheDenverChannel.com Tuesday that investigators now believe the contraband bear was not bound for Colorado. Tight-lipped narcotics investigators won't say where the package was addressed.

Vecchione said he was suspicious as soon as he squeezed the big blue bear.

"I know my plush, because I'm a toy guy. I know what it's supposed to squish like, but it was hard and crinkly," he recalled. He also doesn't sell blue teddy bears, so he knew the contraband bear wasn't purchased at Toy Town.

Pavoni said he stuck his finger in a small hole in the back of the bear and touched something that felt like plastic bags inside.

"I said, 'The only thing I know that somebody stuffs in plastic bags is coke or pot,'" Pavoni recounted. "Because why would you send a kid a bear and stuff gifts in it and then sew it back in?"

Said Vecchione: "I just had a gut feeling that it felt wrong."

He called the Orange County Sheriff's Office to report a "suspicious package."

"When the police got here, they took a knife to the bear in the back room. And, sure enough, there was three big bags of pot," Pavoni said.

The three vacuum-sealed bags of pot were about 10 inches by 10 inches by 2 inches in size, Vecchione said.

"I had to pick myself off of the floor," the toy seller recalled.

The deputies seized teddy and its innards. Their investigation is ongoing.

"It was really funny. We were laughing about it all day," Pavoni added.

But Vecchione is upset that a drug trafficker is using his toy shop as a return address. He's asked the postal service to investigate the bogus bear mailing.

The men also worried about the deputies saying the marijuana had a high street value.

"Somebody's probably very upset (they) didn't get their Christmas package," Vecchione said. "I just don't want them coming after me."