When a man sounding remarkably like US president-elect Barack Obama called a Florida congresswoman, she assumed it was a hoax and hung up on him.
But, the Miami Herald reports, this was no prank.
"I thought it was one of the radio stations in South Florida playing an incredible, elaborate, terrific prank on me," Republican representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen told the newspaper.
"They got Fidel Castro to go along. They've gotten Hugo Chavez and others to fall for their tricks. I said, 'Oh, no, I won't be punk'd'."
Obama congratulated her on her re-election, saying he was looking forward to working with her as the ranking Republican member of the House foreign affairs committee, Ros-Lehtinen told the newspaper.
The conversation lasted about a minute when she cut Obama off, telling him she wasn't falling for the hoax and that he was a better impersonator than the guy on the satirical television show Saturday Night Live, she said.
Then Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, called the congresswoman to tell her it wasn't a joke.
But she hung up on him, too.
It took a call from representative Howard Berman, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, to persuade Ros-Lehtinen that Obama really did want to talk to her.
When the two finally talked, Ros-Lehtinen said she and Obama had a good conversation and she congratulated him for his victory despite how hard she campaigned for his opponent, Senator John McCain.
He didn't even blame her for mistaking him for a radio-station prank, she said.
"He laughed a lot, saying in Chicago they do it all the time," Ros-Lehtinen said.
"He said, 'I don't blame you for being sceptical'."
