This goes back to around 2000. Snake hunting in the Everglades middle of the night, my friend and I saw a black panther. I know, I know, impossible, Florida doesn’t have them etc etc etc. we both saw it clear as in a zoo in the floodlights of his truck. 100% big cat, 100% black.
I have a shirt of a black panther holding a shotgun.
I remember driving around Florida and seeing a sign with a panther on it. It might have said panther crossing or it just implied it. Wish I could remember where it was.
Me and a bunch of guys saw a lynx at a remote airstrip in western Australia.
Plenty evidence of them in the UK, I see no reason they couldn’t be in Florida!
In the wild? Bald Eagle.
I was watching a bald eagle fishing yesterday from my window. They must have moved in to the area, bay of quinte in Ontario, which is good news for their numbers.
They’re pretty common in the rural areas of Florida.
I once saw five different bald eagles on the same day. before that day I’d only ever seen one in my whole life, and I’ve never seen any since despite being in the area all the time.
Tanuki
If we’re including captive animals, the one that stands out the most to me is a Chaco Owl. It’s not considered endangered yet, but it’s only found in one particular area of the world, at the borders of Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina.
In the wild, I’ve come across porcupines on a few occasions, and I almost had a fisher cat run up my leg. I didn’t know we even had them in my state, so I was very freaked out as to what this long, furry thing coming at me was. I wish I had maintained my composure so I could have gotten a better look at it, but it’s also the kind of thing in glad we figured out what each other was before I was in biting range!
Probably my cat. There’s only one of her.
Not super rare, but a wolverine
I once got to meet a Tasmanian Devil baby at a zoo. The zookeeper was carrying him around in a little pouch to keep him comfy while his mom was getting a vet checkup. (The picture is one I found on google because the picture I took is buried in some backup folder from about 6 phones ago)
I saw my first Praying Mantis yesterday.
those things freak me out
Very weird, this guy seems to have moved into our garage. Just saw it again!
Not sure how rare they are, but I’ve seen wild crested caracaras a few times.
Little blue heron. Not so much rare but very rarely seen here.
we have great blues and greens nesting here. The chugging while they’re brooding is like tommyknockers.
We have those nesting here too, and you’re right!
That really bad taxidermy lion that was / is a meme.
When I was a kid, on a trip to Paris, I went to the zoo, and the highlight of the whole trip was seeing an Aldabra giant tortoise (listed as vulnerable by IUCN). Now, even when this was 1990, I was still like “ooooooo cool turt”. I didn’t expect the buddy to jump around and munch pizza. Just a tortoise doing tortoise things slowly.
(The other highlight of the trip was seeing a public Minitel terminal. Holy shit guys, we were only mildly approaching that level in Finland.)
Minitel was, apparently, the shit.
I was at the old job, staring mournfully out the window at the world free of this drudgery, and - lo and behold - I see a black weasel-like animal galumph into view and disappear down a breezeway.
I couldn’t believe my eyes, as this was on Vancouver Island where we have no black weasels.
I looked it up, and apparently there were some mink farms in the area, and they shut down due to one or more problems, so now there’s a resilient invasive mink population up near Camosun and the old Insane Asylum.
There was an albino red fox that lived on a golf course near where I work, I I would see it running along the fence about once a week.
Recently caught a firefly for a few seconds to relive my childhood of catching jars full of them as a night light. I let him go, and was sad that he was so alone; there were only a few flashes in a field where I used to see thousands…
I saw a big white owl. It looks like as tall as a toddler. Then it flew away before I can even react.
