LAKELAND, Fla. — A woman in Lakeland could "bear-ly" believe it when a black bear showed up in her backyard.
Lakeland police and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers showed up to possibly trap the bear, but it ran off Monday afternoon.
Rebecca Carney woke up in the morning to security camera alerts going off.
“I thought that I must have been extra tired or very sleepy,” she said. “I thought I saw a bear on my camera.”
She wasn't afraid of the bear; in fact, it was the polar opposite.
“I thought it was very cute,” Carney said. “He was a very, very cute bear.”
The bear walked from her backyard to her front, then down the street. A couple hours later, however, the bear returned.
“My cameras went off again, and I looked, and the bear had come back,” she said. “[It] was just kind of pacing around my backyard.”
Carney said the bear stayed there for a few hours, just lounging. FWC officers called in a biologist to trap the bear but by the time they were ready, the bear scurried off.
“I work from home, so I was very distracted, always wanting to be on bear watch,” Carney added.
It's the second time in a month there's been a bear spotted in Lakeland. Photos captured a black bear in early May near Lake Gibson, just north of Monday's sighting, which was near Lake Parker.
“We're building up everything,” said Carney’s next door neighbor, Brad Compton. “So we're going to see more and more stuff like that probably.”
FWC says if you see a bear in your neighborhood to give it space and if it is a threat to humans, animals or property, to give them a call.
The bear is roaming free, but Carney says if it happens to show up at her house again, it's fine with her.
“I would actually be okay with that, because he didn't bother me at all,” she said with a laugh.
“I'm just really hoping that the bear is safe, that other people are safe, and that there's a happy ending to this story,” she said.
FWC also says they try to trap a bear if necessary before using any kind of tranquilizer. They add that if given space, most bears will simply move away from residential areas on their own.