The Honey Bear
Sometimes called the Honey Bear or Sugar Bear, the Kinkajou is about the size of your common house cat, weighing about 5 pounds. With their cute little teddy bear face, big adorable eyes, golden color fur and prehensile tail (yes folks they can hang up-side down by that tail) - they look and act like little monkeys - actually Kinkajous are from Central America and are members of the raccoon family.
Many people ask me what it's like to own a kinkajou - well the truth is that although they are cute animals - they are definitely not for someone who wants a cute pet to hang around on your shoulder. Kinkajous (also known as kinks) are intelligent inquisitive and quite miscchievous - it's like having a 2 year old (a nocturnal one at that) which never grows up...25 years of toddler.... which is how long a kinkajou lives.
Cally - short for Caliaas Maine (4 years old) and comes from Naples, Florida.
Cally is quiet and shy - while Fenny can simply be called "distruction in motion" a curious hyper ball of fur - he got out one time and I tell you.. the destruction made the work of a 2 year old with paints look simple - if it could be open, dumped upside down, pulled off a shelf or off a wall then he did it. These are critters that you don't want to run around yourhopuse unsupervised - Cally and Fenny live in a 9x9x10 foot room - with hanging rope ladders, large tree branches, hanging baskets, and a toy box filled with teddy bears.
Not cheap to feed - kinks like to eat figs, bananas, pineapple, mandarin oranges, papayas, pineapples, mangoes, other sweet fruits (which they lick with their 6 inch long tongues) - and of course Gummy Bears...but their favourite food is bananas - in fact my kinks will do anything for a banana. If left to their own devices they would eat about 100 lbs of bananas a month - so they also get a specialized Omnivore Zoo Diet, Monkey Yums and Monkey Chow that I ship in from Toronto.
Because Kinks are nocturnal - you can often find me in the kink room at 2:00am - wrestling and playing games with them - Fenny's favourite game is hide and dive bomb - he will hide under his blanket then dive bomb or jump on my head or back as I walk by - more fun for him than me I think LOL.
A final thought --
Do Kinkajou make "good pets?" In my opinion "Yes" - the question is do YOU make a "good Kinkajou owner." The answer to that question is more often than not "NO."