Florida woman comes face to face with bear outside her door
MIAMI - A Daytona Beach woman who said on occasion she will send her dog to get rid of cats that gather on her front porch recently faced something much larger and scarier.
Last Thursday, Gina Helsel said she took her dog out to clear the porch early in the morning. That's when she got quite a shock when a bear poked its head around the corner, just a few feet from her.
"The bear was getting in the neighbor's trash and I caught it in the act," she said.
Helsel said she screamed and struggled with the door to get back inside. As she and the dog made it to safety, the bear turned tail and wandered off.
The whole encounter was caught on a Ring camera.
"The bear was mostly focused on the dog, it basically lunges in a little bit of a bluff charge and then when she and the dog retreat the bear runs away," said Michael Orlando, a bear biologist who reviewed the video.
He said it didn't seem to be an aggressive behavior.
"They just startled each other," he said. "She probably wasn't prepared to have a bear sitting there and the probably wasn't prepared to have her show up with the dog."
"I'm always looking for gators, I'm always looking for snakes, and I have this great fear of, you know, like a coyote or something, but bears I don't really think about," said Helsel.
Helsel's neighborhood backs up to a nature conservation area which is a natural habitat for bears.