Denver Museum of Nature & Science Gets Bison Back

It's not exactly like misplacing your car keys - unless your car keys weighed over 600 pounds and was covered in fur.

Since at least 1965, a stuffed bison from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science had been missing - or so they thought. The legend of the missing giant grew over the years, with former employees passing down the stories to new employees generation by generation.

The museum has been open for more than 100 years, since 1908 believe it or not, then called the Colorado Museum of Natural History. When it opened there were five bison in their collection that came from naturalist Edwin Carter. Except, somewhere around the mid 60s, it dropped to four. Nobody seemed to notice, or at least not until many years later.

Someone at some point said "hey, wait... wasn't there supposed to be five?"

Related: This Colorado Park Is Home to Many Rare White Buffaloes

Fast forward 60 years since the bison was last confirmed safely amongst his peers at the museum, and a woman named Rebecca Jacobs started poking around a stuffed bison located not all that far away, turns out, up at the Buffalo Bill Museum on Lookout Mountain.

Fitting place for the giant to have wandered off to, I suppose. Turns out based on photos taken of the collection in the 1920s, staff from the two museums were able to verify that in fact the bison up at Buffalo Bill's place was in fact the same bison that belonged to the museum back in the early 1900s.

How it got up there remains a mystery, but all's well that ends well, as he was put on a truck and hauled back to Denver to be reunited with his friends.

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You can read a deeper dive on the story and the history of the missing bison from our friends at 9News in Denver.