Members of a Shia militia manning a checkpoint near the front lines of the battle with ISIS in northern Iraq stopped a pickup truck with a rather unusual passenger this week: a lion.

It is not clear where the lion came from, or what happened to it after it was found, but fighters from the Saraya Al-Salam militia were clearly amused, posing a little too close for comfort near the beast as one of their comrades filmed them.

Saraya Al-Salam is one of several Iranian-backed Shia militias fighting alongside the Iraqi armed forces against ISIS and its Sunni allies. The checkpoint in question was near the city of Samarra, which is located in an area known as the “Sunni Triangle” and hence a hotbed of support for the ISIS-led rebellion against Baghdad.