BDCWire
Kevin Slane

Huh, you don’t see that every day.

While walking through a park in Essex, London resident Martin Le-May happened upon a truly extraordinary sight: A baby weasel riding a woodpecker.

According to Le-May, he and his wife were walking through the park in the hopes of seeing a green woodpecker for the first time. When they heard a squawking and saw a flash of green, Le-May got out the camera. What he ended up with was beyond anything they’d dreamed of.

Le-May doesn’t seem like a heavy social media user, but once his photo made its way to Twitter, it created a firestorm.

Despite what may seem like an adorable scene straight out of a Redwall book, Le May assured Buzzfeed in an email that this was a life or death battle.

Lots of wing flapping showing that gloriously yellow/white colour interspersed with the flash of red head feathers. Just after I switched from my binoculars to my camera the bird flew across us and slightly in our direction; suddenly it was obvious it had a small mammal on its back and this was a struggle for life.

The woodpecker landed in front of us and I feared the worst. I guess though our presence, maybe 25 meters away, momentarily distracted the weasel. The woodpecker seized the opportunity and flew up and away into some bushes away to our left. Quickly the bird gathered its self respect and flew up into the trees and away from our sight.

Of course, because this is an amazing photo posted on the Internet, there were plenty of remixes too.

As cool as Vladimir Putin riding a weasel riding a woodpecker being chased by Gandalf and a stormtrooper may be, nothing beats the unedited majesty of the original photo. Sometimes these things need to be seen to be believed.

[h/t Buzzfeed]