Late last month, a man, whose identity has not been released, was leaving his girlfriend’s Lake Worth Beach apartment to go to work in the morning when a kinkajou came barging into the second-story residence and attacked him, CBS 12reports.
The four-legged rainforest creature — which resembles a monkey, but is related to raccoons — had been waiting outside the door all night hoping to get more food after the man and some neighbors fed it watermelon the day prior, according to the outlet.
Luckily, the man only suffered non-life-threatening injuries from the encounter with the furry animal, including a bite to the foot and scratches on the back of his leg.
The man’s scratched leg.Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
“It sounded like a 300-pound man was tackling him in the kitchen,” Dulach explained to CBS 12. “That’s why I thought somebody was breaking into my house. It scared me, to be honest.”
“When he opened the door, it charged at him, at his leg and clung to his leg and then he was trying to get it off … And it kept coming back in,” she continued, noting that she “got scared” and slammed her bedroom door shut.
“It was scary! I didn’t think it was gonna come into the house,” Dulach added. “We’ll probably never forget this.”
The man’s foot with bite marks.Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
The man was eventually able to lock the kinkajou in the bathroom until wildlife officers arrived at the home, CBS 12 reports.
It is unclear if the animal has since been released into the wild.
A rep for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
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According toNational Geographic, kinkajous are typically found in tropical forests of Central and South America. The animals are known for their tails, which work like another arm and allow them to balance and hang from branches.
Similar to their raccoon relatives, Kinkajous are nocturnal animals who roam and eat at night, but they also have the ability to turn their feet backward to quickly run in either direction along branches or up and down trunks.
They are sometimes referred to as “honey bears” due to how they raid bees’ nests and slurp honey from hives. Besides honey, the kinkajou also enjoys eating fruit and small mammals, which they catch with their sharp claws, the magazine reports.
source: people.com
