Where’d you get it? I’ve been looking for a good way to display my rabid beavers.
Try Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops.
Sledding back from one of our remote sites my partner rounded a corner on the trail and I nearly ran into him. The reason he was stopped was a bull moose with about a six foot rack standing on the trail about 20 ft away. So we sat and waited, quietly, for about 5 minutes before he wandered off, casually mowing down poplars thicker than my wrist in search of whatever. I’ve also seen a lynx twice and they’re notoriously shy.
Found a hole in the lawn one day, then I noticed it’s [dead] maker nearby: a mole. It was a little bigger than I expected.
Them mole noses is a funny looking appendage.
I live in a residential neighborhood, but my house is on the edge of the neighborhood with woods and a creek right behind it. I’ve had deer, wild turkeys, possums, raccoons in my back yard.
The most notable two visitors were a groundhog that climbed up the stair to my second story deck in order to chew on the wife’s potted plants. He was not at all interested in leaving quickly and it took about 2 minutes of me tapping on the glass window to get him to finally get irritated enough to leave.
The second guest was spectacular in nature. As I was rounding the back corner of my house I hear a loud sound like something crashed into the fence and then immediately flying in front of me was a hawk holding a rabbit who was having a very bad day. I was not quite close enough to touch the hawk, a position I was grateful for.
In Toronto, seeing packs of huge raccoons = an average summer night’s walk in the city. 
Our city probably has about as many raccoons as people.
We used to have them holding noisy turf wars in our back yard.
For myself - the most startling wildlife encounters were both driving. First, just north of Barrie, Ont., I was driving home from my dad’s cabin when a large bear jaywalked right in front of me - he almost became roadkill (my car likewise). That was startling (for both of us), particularly as I had no idea bears were found so far south and so near a city.
A second car encounter was more remote, when canoing in Algonquin Park - driving back at night was a wildlife-full experience. First, a giant owl was sitting on the road, and suddenly appeared in the headlights - as it flew off, right over the windscreen, its wingspan about the size of the windsceen. That was pretty startling.
Much more dangerous was enountering a moose calf on the road, same night. It took off down the road with me driving after it. I wanted to stop and let it go its way, but my buddy was all ‘drive! Drive!’ - because, although I couldn’t see it, its mom was galumphing after us down the road with blood in her eye. We drove in convoy like that for a few hundered yards - the calf, the car, and mom - until the calf finally veered and crashed through the woods, and we lost them.
Moose, seen in the wild, are like something from the Pleistocene era - huge and primitive-looking. You do not want one angry at you.
Down by our local canal we’ve seen beavers and otters. The otters were a real shock (and delight). We go there all the time but have only seen the bigger animals if we get there very early before dawn and it’s miserable enough out that nobody else is there.
During the summer months I ride a bike trail to work when I can, 60 to 80 days every year and have done so for the last 13 years. 2 years ago in May I was on my way home and saw a bear crossing the trail a couple hundred yards ahead I’d say. He turned his head and looked at me and continued on toward the creek.
I was concerned so I emailed the parks department to report the bear. The response I got the next day was “yeah, there are are bears in that area. Be careful of foxes, there was a rabid fox caught on the trail” (way south of where I ride). Wouldn’t you know that afternoon a fox crossed my path on my ride home. It was unaggressive and just went on its way. Never seen a bear or fox before or since.
Usually the only wildlife I see are deer. I’ve seen some muskrats and one porcupine. Oh, and a blue heron.
I used to see them all the time when I was younger but they don’t come around so much anymore. Thank goodness for the internet.
Got a breeding pair of the few Connecticut eagles living in the big oak in our back lot. I figure it likes it here because we don’t worry about them snacking on our chickens in the winter. Not sure if you could consider me unexpectedly encountering it because I can grab the binox and see the nest from the back deck.
Well, I did have the windshield on my older jetta broken when I hit a full grown tom turkey that misjudged my speed when it tried to fly across the road … left a decorative spiderweb across the entire right side. Now I just have to be arsed to get it replaced before I get the car reinspected and back on the road. Since we have 2 cars, a p’up truck and a momvan, the second car is not needed immediately so we let it lapse. We had picked up the momvan and didn’t really need it but hadn’t gotten around to giving it away.
I was hiking in the southern California desert when I was about 16 and a herd of about 15 bighorn sheep wandered through our group. It was incredible.
(And yes, when we saw the beaver we immediately reverted to twelve year old boys. It was, indeed, natural. It seemed quite hairy. And of course it was wet.)
Many years ago, I was out trail riding on my horse by myself on about 400 acres of woods. There was a crashing in the underbrush ahead of me, to my left. I thought it was one of the deer that were so common and stopped my horse. A rabbit broke thru the brush maybe 25-30 feet ahead, and hot on it’s tail was a bobcat!
When he/she came onto the wide, open trail, the bobcat stopped, staring at me and my horse. None of us moved for about 30 seconds and then the cat flipped his tail and stalked off into the woods.
One of the most awesome things I have ever seen!
I’ve seen a couple of fox, a few coyotes, and a whole bunch of other critters on the north shore of Chicago, but I think the most unusual wildlife I ever saw would be a bird that looked exactly like a kingfisher. I’m pretty sure it *was *a kingfisher, but I’m hedging because I don’t know if it’s ridiculous to claim that where I live.
Also saw a cormorant once.
One Summer, when I was in high school, i was up late watching TV when I heard something moving in the kitchen. I went and looked, and found a raccoon calmly raiding the dog’s food dish, taking the kibble one piece at a time and washing it in the water bowl before eating it.
He showed up every night for about a week, until my dad found the hole in the foundation he was squeezing through, and patched it.
A couple years ago, my mom (still living at the same suburban house) was walking the dog down the street, and saw a seal coming the other direction. She crossed the street and let it pass, then called animal control. There’s a canal nearby that leads to the sea, and apparently he had swum up it and then gotten lost.
I was walking around a lake and saw a bunch of people staring into the water from a bridge. I looked down and it was a beaver swimming around.
A few weeks ago, at the same lake, I saw a bald eagle flying overhead.
I was being serious! I was walking by a river years ago, and a beaver came out of the water and was kind of chasing me - I walked away, and it kept coming at me. I wondered if it was indeed rabid - it wasn’t acting normally.
My ridiculous claim is that I’m sure I saw a cougar lying by the side of the highway, sunning itself one day - sort of like this. We went by so fast I couldn’t be sure that was what I saw, but I don’t really know what else it could have been - a cougar looks like a cougar! I know that cougars aren’t likely to lie by the side of a highway and sun themselves, but they’re cats - cats do as cats please.
A couple of months ago when I was in the grocery store parking lot, some little critter shot by me. It was moving way faster that I imagined something that small could move – I think it was a chipmunk. It flashed into the store entrance which happened to be open because someone was going through it.
Then I saw why it was racing. Some kind of hawk swooped down behind it and veered off just before it got to the door. Then it perched on an overhead streetlight fixture in the lot and … waited. It was still waiting when I came out after my shopping. I don’t know where the critter went once it got into the store. I didn’t see it in there.