Put yourself watching this scene described by the North Dakota Game and Fish Department: District Game Warden Riley Gerding is out in the middle of North Dakota nowhere, doing the usual “squinting at trucks” routine during deer season. He spots a guy in high-vis orange—classic hunter chic—acting suspiciously shifty near a slough.

The guy is bending over, wrestling with something in the tall grass, and then—yoink—he shoves a large, dark, struggling mass into the backseat of his pickup.

Gerding, naturally assuming he’s about to bust a poacher or at least a very messy field-dressing session, rolls up for the big reveal. Expecting a trophy buck, he instead finds himself staring at a confused, oversized prehistoric chicken.

Turns out, it wasn’t an illegal harvest; it was just a local guy wrangling his pet emu that had decided to go on a “find itself” journey across the prairie…. ha! Read Gerding’s full story here.

Big Sky, Big Surprises

Now, if you think North Dakota is the only place where the wildlife gets weird, you haven’t spent enough time in Montana. We like to think we’re all about the “Last Best Place” thing, but our state can be just as unexpected and unpredictable.

Whether it’s elephants and camels playing Frogger in the streets of Butte (yes, that actually happened) or zebras near Opportunity, the 406 is basically a glitch in the Matrix for exotic animals.

It is kind of a comforting thought, really…no matter which side of the state line you’re on, if you see a man wrestling a flightless Australian bird into a Ford F-150, it’s probably just a Tuesday.