GOLDEN GATE ESTATES, Fla. -- A family of bears out for a stroll sent one Florida woman running to find her video camera Monday morning.
"I was like, no way," Lila Colon said. "I saw one bear. Then they kept coming out and coming out."
There were five bears all together, what seemed to be a family with a mother and her four cubs.
Colon said she knew they were going straight to the trash she had taken out 30 minutes earlier.
"Bears are opportunistic feeders," Naples Zoo Director David Tetzlaff said. "They go wherever there's a food source, so if you're laying out a buffet for a bear, you're going to attract them."
Bears are protected in Florida.
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the black bear population has been expanding since the 1980s.
Tetzlaff said Southwest Florida is one of nine hot spots in the state for black bears, but the animals are not typically aggressive.
"Odds are you aren't going to be attacked," Tetzlaff said. "The bears are more afraid of you than vice versa, but you have to respect the bear."
WBBH