Michael Sakasegawa had just finished his morning run on Wednesday when he spotted something peculiar: It was a lemon rolling down a hill.
Sakasegawa, who's 39 and lives in San Diego, said he didn't realize what the object was until he got closer.
"I had to run to catch up with it," he told BuzzFeed News. "I had initially thought it was a tennis ball or something."
Amused by the traveling citrus, he pulled out his phone and started filming.
"As a photographer, a lot of what I take pictures of, and just sort of one of the things I try and do, is elevate the ordinary and mundane and find things that are beautiful and entertaining," he said.
The result? A 1-minute, 51-second video of a lemon rolling down a hill, which has been viewed nearly 4 million times.
Though the video runs just under two minutes, Sakasegawa said the lemon rolled for about three or four minutes total.
Somehow, Sakasegawa's simple video went ridiculously viral.
And for just a brief, beautiful moment, everyone on Twitter came together to root for the lemon.
Thanks to its newfound fame, Sakasegawa took the lemon home with him. It is, as experts would dub it, an "absolute unit."
The fruit weighed 262 grams — more than half a pound.
"It was pretty hefty," said Sakasegawa.
Fans of the hefty lemon have given Sakasegawa all sorts of suggestions of what to do with it, he said.
"A bunch of people think I should make lemonade with it or eat it or something," he said. "A few other people have said, 'You need to plant it.'"
For now, he's got no major plans for the lemon.
"I thought at least I'd hang onto it long enough to show my kids," he said.
Sakasegawa said he's "really surprised" the video became such a big deal.
"I don't know that there's really any rhyme or reason for why something gets big on the internet," he said.
"Some people have mentioned they find it soothing or relaxing," he said. "Some people find it inspiring — they're rooting for the lemon to go as far as it can."
At the end of the day, perhaps there's no use trying to explain the wonders of the hefty rolling lemon and how it brought people together.
"You come right down to it, it's just a lemon rolling down a hill," he said.