Bear Photos from Wekiva State Park in Central Florida

One of the main reasons we bought our house is because it backs up to Wekiva Springs State Park ( I would have killed to have grown up here as a kid!) As a result, our backyard is basically nothing but woods. And those woods are full of critters! Turkeys, deer, gators, otters, possums, foxes, bears..heck, once we even saw a monkey (I kid you not).

So, anyway….yesterday, I had opened the garage so I could do some repairs around the back of the house. Ten minutes later when I was ambling back up the pathway to the garage, guess who I ran into?

This big fella had gone into my garage, knocked over the trash can and dragged the bag into the backyard for a nice little picnic! So being the photography nut that I am, my first reaction was to grab my camera and rip off some shots. But within a minute or two my ‘good citizenship’ instinct kicked-in and I scared him away to discourage him from getting used to people and associating them with food.

It’s funny, during the minute or two I was photographing him, I was a calm as I could be…just figuring out what the best settings should be, what angle would work well, etc. But after I chased him off my pulse rate shot up a bit..I mean, I know that Black Bears aren’t very aggressive, but how often do you walk up on something that could do you some serious damage if it had a mind to?