I don’t know what could be more unexpected in the mind of the average Baltimorean, seeing a beaver in the Jones Falls or Borofsky’s “Male/Female” statue during a walk in a park in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I’ll start with the beaver.

William Prestwich, strolling north on Falls Road in Mount Washington the other day, looked down into the Jones Falls, where it passes under Smith Avenue. He spotted a great blue heron, a bird that is commonly seen in the valley.

But then Prestwich saw something else in the water. At first he thought it might be a rat. It turned out to be a much bigger rodent, unmistakably a beaver, and he snapped a couple of pictures.

A beaver is not something a Baltimorean expects to see within the city limits, though urban wildlife sightings have become more common in recent years.

Last fall, artist Jordan Tierney came out of Whole Foods, just upstream of where Prestwich saw the beaver, and walked across the parking lot to the Jones Falls. While sipping on a kombucha she spotted two young otters cavorting in the river.

Again, that’s not something a Baltimorean expects to see. We assume that urbanization has destroyed habitat for wildlife when, in fact, there are many greenways and waterways that provide various critters with passage within the city. The waters of the Jones Falls might have improved enough to trigger otters to return to an ancestral area. The beaver might have sensed the same.

On Monday, I received another entry in the category of things we didn’t expect to see: A 23-foot version of “Male/Female,” the amazing 51-foot statue that stands outside Baltimore’s Penn Station.

Paula Fargo, during a weekend trip to Grand Rapids, visited the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. Suddenly, she says, she was “gobsmacked” to see the same strange, silvery statue she’s seen a million times back in Baltimore.

Jonathan Borofsky’s metal depiction of the intersection of male and female forms is in its 20th year at Penn Station. It was once derided as oversized and out of place, but by now seems generally accepted as an appropriately bizarre Baltimore landmark. Turns out, Borofsky made three smaller versions of “Male/Female.” There’s one in Japan, one in Germany and one in Grand Rapids.

I started thinking about the uncanny unexpected. I started asking around for more examples of things people did not see coming.

Kurt Kolaja, an old friend and coworker from my WBAL-TV days, lives on the Eastern Shore. One day, he says, he was driving along Route 544 in Queen Anne’s County when he came upon a woman butchering a male deer by the side of the road. She was a mom from a van, intent on harvesting some road-kill venison. “Obviously, she had planned for such a lucky day as she was packing a meat saw,” Kurt says. “She played that saw like Yo-Yo Ma plays the cello while her kids waited in the van.”

Also unexpected: Within the past week or so, tarpon have been spotted in the Chesapeake Bay. That’s a big, silvery fish associated with tropical waters; they are popular targets for sport anglers in Florida. While tarpon have occasionally been seen in Virginia waters, around here they are rare. Capt. Tom Weaver, a veteran fishing guide, reported seeing several of them last week near Hoopers Island Lighthouse in the middle of the bay, and he estimated them to be between 80 and 100 pounds each. Weaver said “my brain took a few minutes to process” seeing in the Chesapeake a fish he had previously only seen in the Florida Keys.

This got me thinking about other unexpected things.

Marsupial Mystery:About 12 years ago, alerted by my vigilant beagle Rocky to odd sounds and movement in the basement of my house, I found three baby possums hanging out on pipes. No one has yet explained how they got there.

Arboreal Appliance: One summer day several years ago, during a raft trip on the North Branch of the Potomac River, we looked up to see a white washing machine lodged in a tree in a tangle of debris a good 12 feet above the riverbank. My fishing companion, who lived in the area, was certain it had been placed there by a flood. I took a moment to imagine what a wild and powerful event that must have been, and was glad to have missed it.

That Time in Times Square: Somebody once said, “If you stand in Times Square long enough, everybody you know will pass by.” I’ve also heard it put this way: “Stand in Times Square for 20 minutes and you’ll see someone you know.” Both statements were old-school boasts about New York City being the center of the universe, and I never gave the claim a thought until the unexpected happened.

I grew up in a small Massachusetts town, population 8,500. One of the ushers in our church was a mild-mannered fellow named Jimmy McNamara. Several years after I left that town, I went to New York City for the first time. I got off the subway at 42d Street, walked through Times Square to a theater, and at the entrance of the theater, Jimmy McNamara called out to me. He had a ticket for the same show. Time from subway to uncanny encounter with Jimmy McNamara: Less than 20 minutes.