99-year-old woman wakes up to find a strange South American animal sleeping on her

A 99-year-old woman in Miami woke up in the middle of the night to find an exotic animal she had never seen before sleeping on her chest. The woman's son-in-law told NBC Miami: "I was awaken by a phone call at 2am, which is never good news, and it was from my terrified mother-in-law."

The woman had awoken to find a kinkajou – a mammal native to Central America and South America – had come into the house and curled up asleep on her chest. The family lured it into a cage and took it to a local veterinarian.

The vet, Dr Don J. Harris, knew immediately that the kinkajou must be someone's pet: "No undomesticated wild animal like this would curl up on a woman's chest to go to sleep."

After the story ran on a number of local Miami news services, the kinkajou's owner, Ray Fernandez, went down to South Dade Avian and Exotic Animal Medical Center to collect his pet of five years.

"I was tenting my house and I had to move her to my brother's house in a temporary cage and she figured out a way to open it up, she's got really good hands," said Fernandez.

Though not native to the US, kinkajous can be kept as pets if the owner holds a special license. Dr. Harris told Q13 Fox that he sees one or two kinkajous a year at the exotic animal medical centre where he works.