Bryan Peabody walked out his back door, turned and rushed back inside.

The call of the wild was on and he needed his camera.

Peabody watched as a Florida alligator came out of the water and crouched low at the edge. A bobcat up the bank looked into the brush and trees.

"He was sitting on the edge of the pond, with his face away from the pond," Peabody said Wednesday, "his back to the pond."

He snapped the first shot from inside the house, but the call grew stronger and he made the decision to get a closer look and channel his inner Steve Irwin. "I came running down here with my camera, approaching the pond and I snuck up behind these trees."

Not only was the bobcat oblivious to a Florida gator bearing down, it also didn't seem to notice Peabody coming its way. "I was still surprised the cat didn't notice ... that I was here. And so I decided to snap a few more shots and that's when I saw that monster come out of the water."

Low. Quiet. Out of view.

He could have been on a far-flung trip to the Serengeti, watching a giant croc stalk a wildebeest, but why go so far with a National Geographic documentary attack just outside his Tampa Palms back door?

"It took my breath away. I realized at that moment that I was about to witness something that I didn't know if I even wanted to see."

We counted 40 paces from where the bobcat was before the attack to the pond. Peabody kept watching through his lens, snapping away and the gator took a slow, stealth line to the bobcat's back.

Suddenly, he felt the photographer's dilemma: warn or let nature be.

Nature would take its course.

"My heart was racing," as the gator came within inches of the bobcat's back -- crikey! -- "but I'm glad it ended up the way it did."

It may have been the gator was just protecting its turf. It may have been its jaws had a similar sort of reaction time as the bobcat's ability to sense danger. Maybe they were old friends, and the ole gator was playing a joke on the ole cat.

Mere inches away, the estimated 10-foot, 300-pound alligator finally came close enough to trigger the bobcat's escape.

The bobcat scampered up the bank and into the woods; the gator's jaws opened for the first time as it ran away.

"I'm glad he got away," Peabody said, "to live another day."