NICEVILLE — In the more than 20 years David Miller has lived in the Cedar Ridge neighborhood, he has seen every type of wildlife except bears.
That changed Sunday night when the thumping noise he attributed to bombs on the Eglin reservation turned out to be a large black bear making a piñata out of the birdfeeders in his backyard.
“My wife comes rushing back to me and she said, ‘There’s something pounding at the back door,’ ” Miller recalled. “I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ”
He turned on the motion sensors and floodlights and spotted the bear “prancing around the backyard,” he said.
“He looks up to see me at the back door,” Miller said. “He wanders over, looking at me and I’m looking at him.”
Miller also was calling for assistance. A Niceville police officer showed up and they followed the advice of a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission dispatcher to “scare the bear off.”
The bear, which standing up on his hind legs was taller than 6 feet, wasn’t easy to scare. He retreated up a tree where he stayed until Miller and the officer turned out the lights.
“He didn’t seem agitated,” Miller said. “He was just doing his own thing.
“He was a very attractive bear, just as pitch black as you’d want to see,” he added.
Now, the birdfeeders are gone from Miller’s yard and many of his neighbors also have taken down theirs.
One neighbor reported seeing a bear standing on a corner with a bag of garbage in his mouth.
Another called for help Monday night from her garage, where she was waiting for the bear to leave before she came out.
Stan Kirkland, public information officer for the FWC, said the presence of bears around humans always can be traced back to a food source.
“The bear smells something that he’s after,” Kirkland said. “If you’ve got bears around, it’s important not to leave anything around that serves as an attractant.”
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Wendy Victora at 850-315-4478 or wvictora@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @WendyVnwfdn.