View from the North 40: 'The Twilight Zone': It was all real

When I was a kid one of the small handful of television networks that our TV would pick up regularly ran reruns of “The Twilight Zone,” and that program really kept us alert because we didn’t know what we were going to get each week — science fiction, fantasy suspense, a good ol’ creepy thriller. The one thing you could rely on, though, was that weird stuff was going to happen, weird and unexpected.

Thankfully, this TV program prepared my brain for this week when, apparently, space has folded in on itself and items from disparate points of Earth appeared where they were not expected.

In California, a bear appeared in a car, he also appeared angry. He had done so much damage to the vehicle that the doors wouldn’t open so a deputy broke a window for the bear to escape. It was a boringly low-tech way to open a portal between worlds, but effect nonetheless and the bear returned to the forrest from whence he came.

A rat turned up inside a sealed ATM in India. It wasn’t supposed to be there so no attempt at hospitality had been made for the rat’s comfort, therefore, the rat helped itself to roughly $18,000 dollars worth of rupees. Then, unable to sustain life in an alien environment, the rat died, and the money, presumably, then had to be laundered.

Security camera footage did not show the rat walking into the machine, which is consistent with the process of traveling through a portal, tear, hole or other orifice in the universe.

A purse disappeared from a woman’s vehicle Sunday at a convenience store in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and the contents of the purse miraculously reappeared Tuesday in the possession of Shamon West, 21. He tried to pay for a restaurant meal with one of the missing credit cards.

Interestingly, the contents of the purse — which included the mentioned credit card, the woman’s Social Security card and her driver’s license — tried to reunite itself with its owner who was working at a restaurant Tuesday night. She recognized the plastic when the guy, who is now being held on a $2,840 bond, tried to pay her with her own credit card.

We’ll wrap this up right here in north-central Montana where we thought seeing bears on the prairie was weird enough.

Wednesday morning, Montana Highway Patrol troopers were called to the scene of a vehicle crash on U.S. Highway 2 near Dodson after the driver swerved to miss a kangaroo in the road.

Yes. The unique animal from the Australian outback was still in the vicinity when the trooper arrived. The two people in the vehicle only sustained minor injuries despite the fact that their vehicle rolled.

Don’t worry, Tina and Richard Phillips told the Great Falls Tribune Thursday, it was not the couple’s wallaby from Fort Belknap that caused the crash. Yes, a wallaby in Fort Belknap.

So it appears that Montana marsupials are a thing now. I only ask that if they continue breaching that weak point in space allowing them to cross here from the land down under that they bring fresh shrimp and some good beer.

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It’s all true, especially the part about wanting fresh shrimp and good beer at http://www.facebook.com.viewfromthenorth40/.