Pipsquack?!

When I lived in Menasha, Wisconsin, my house was located on a channel of the Fox River, so wildlife was plentiful in my backyard, especially ducks! I often bought 50 pounds of corn (which I kept in my dining room, next to patio door) for my feathered friends. The ducks were such frequent visitors that they soon became tame enough to hand-feed, and eventually acquired names. One particularly bold duck, who earned the moniker "Lou Anne", would waddle right up on my deck and quack at the patio door for more corn, to which I obliged.

While gardening in my back yard one day, I thought one of the ducks had waddled up onto the wharf for more food, but upon closer inspection, it wasn't a duck at all. It was the strangest creature that I had ever seen! It looked like some huge prehistoric bird--it was about three feet tall, slate gray, with long spindly legs, and a long pointy beak. I kept thinking that I had witnessed some rare, once-thought-to-be-extinct-bird---and it was in MY BACK YARD! I had an immediate flashback to the "Hold That Pose" cartoon in which Tom and Jerry, armed only with cameras, are "in search of the rare, never-before-photographed, fuzzy-feathered pipsquacker bird." The statuesque creature perched quietly on the wharf, unfazed as I stared in awe, a mere 10 feet away. My curious visitor's stay lasted only five or ten minutes, but it was incredible, nonetheless!

Later, I found out that I had not spotted the "rare and elusive pipsquacker bird" or any other "rare" bird, for that matter--it was, in fact, a cormorant. Some great bird watcher I am! In all of my years living in Wisconsin, I had never seen such a creature! What's even funnier, a month or so later, a friend told  me that he had seen" the weirdest looking bird he'd ever seen" while boating on Lake Winnebago. Go figure!

What's the strangest creature you have ever seen?