Courtesy of Dan Swafford

Dan Swafford captured this image of a bear at Christiansburg High School as it ran across Independence Boulevard. Swafford teaches agriculture at the high school.

A high school teacher and amateur photographer, Swafford and his wife ride around Montgomery County two or three nights a week during the summer, looking in vain for bears.

He never expected one to show up at Christiansburg High School -- and knock on a window. But that's what happened Friday morning just after 10 a.m.

The school's bookkeeper, Revonda Brumfield, said she was sitting in her office with her back to the window when she heard banging on it.

"I turned around and there is this cub about as tall as I am" and with its paws on the window, Brumfield said, laughing, "and I had a heart attack."

Brumfield called 911 to report the bear.

Another school employee called for Swafford, who was emptying trash at the time but still had his camera. He carries it everywhere because, as he says, "you never know."

Swafford, an agriculture teacher who has planned vacations around his desire to see bears, was able to snap several pictures of the black bear as it ran through the parking lot, across Independence Boulevard and down a hill.

"I was excited," Swafford said. "This is an amateur photographer's best dream."

Making it better, he said, is the fact that the bear happened to show up on his last day at the school before summer break.

He said a Christiansburg police officer told him the bear had been seen several times Friday morning.

"I told my wife I can die happy now," Swafford said. "It's been a passion for me to get a picture of a bear."