When Jada Thurmond showed up at the emergency room complaining of stabbing stomach pain Sept. 18, the doctors treated her for a virus and sent her home.
By the next morning, the 16-year-old was battling a fever of 102, suffering severe headaches and urinating blood. Her mother rushed her to Children's Hospital at Erlanger. That's when Thurmond told her mother and doctors about the kinkajou bite. To which everyone replied, "Kinka-what?" "I had never heard of the animal, and neither had the doctors," said Thurmond's mother, Miika Montgomery. "I was Googling it, they were Googling it. ... If it had been a dog or a cat or a raccoon they would have known exactly what to do, but they had never seen anything like this."
The kinkajou -- native to Central and South America -- is a rainforest-dwelling mammal related to the raccoon. With a mouselike face, catlike body and monkeylike tail, it's a perfect conglomeration of cuteness. But it's a deceptive cuteness, animal experts say, that can quickly give way to sharp claws, canine teeth and nasty bites. Story source
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