A bobcat on the causeway between NASA's Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station pauses to check out the photographer.

A bobcat on the causeway between NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida pauses to check out the photographer who chanced upon it during the hunt for its next meal.

The cat is seldom observed during the day unless scared from its daytime shelter. It is the last large mammalian predator remaining on the center. Kennedy and the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge mutually reside on 140,000 acres on central Florida’s east coast. The area’s coastal dunes, saltwater estuaries and marshes, freshwater impoundments, scrub, pine flatwoods, and hardwood hammocks provide habitats for more than 1,000 species of plants and animals, including about 331 species of birds. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/kennedy. Photo credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann