When I was about six or seven, the local county fair had a huge midway attraction that promised a "prehistoric monster of the Amazon" that "terrified the Spaniards". I blew my only quarter to get in line, expecting some Ray Harryhausen monstrosity that would break free and rampage down the midway before being shot to death by the Army Reserve. While almost everyone else was disappointed to no end that the monsters were capybaras, I was fascinated: I'd never seen one alive before, as they weren't all that common in zoos at the time. Besides, how often do you get the chance to see a capybara in Michigan?

(What makes things funnier is that most of Texas was wet enough during the last Ice Age that Dallas had capybaras along with its other odd fauna. We had mammoths, glyptodonts, capybaras, and vampire bats the size of crows. If only I had access to a time machine...)