An elderly woman in Miami awoke to find a kinkajou named Banana cuddling on her chest. “Oh it’s a cute kinkajou!” is what she didn’t yell out.
Instead, she phoned her son-in-law, Carlos Aguaras, to alert him that some weird animal was running loose in her home. This wild mammal known as the kinkajou—the raccoon’s distant cousin—normally inhabits rainforests in Central and South America, not homes in Miami.
Carlos Aguaras got the call from his 99-year-old mother-in-law around 2 a.m., “which is never good news,” he told NBC Miami. He referred to the kinkajou as “a cross between a monkey and a cat.” Sounds about right.
The kinkajou (whose name is Banana, they later found out) retreated to the attic, after which Aguaras was able to trap it using food as bait.
People reports:
They got the animal inside a cage and brought it to veterinarian Dr. Don J. Harris from the South Dade Avian & Exotic Animal Medical Center, who told NBC Miami he knew the animal was somebody’s pet.
“No undomesticated wild animal like this would curl up on a woman’s chest to go to sleep,” Harris said, adding that a wild creature like this one could easily cause someone to lose a limb.
Banana was set to be returned to its owners today. Oh what a journey it’s had.
Contact the author at clover.hope@jezebel.com.
Images via NBC screengrab
