Talk about a wild ride.
I’m sure this bear didn’t expect this to go down when he woke up that morning.
Bears are just too smart for their own good. We see it all the time, a black bear coming into human territory looking for food. It’s hard to blame them, we make it easy. We leave garbage out, BBQ on our decks, and have vegetables growing right in our yard.
For an animal that’s whole life is based around where it gets its next meal while using as little energy as possible, it’s almost hard to believe we don’t have more encounters. Bears have an amazing sense of smell, known to be one of the strongest in the animal kingdom. We’re talking about smelling food from over a mile away.
This bear in Grand Falls, New Brunswick wandered into a downtown area right on main street. Naturally, the bear got a lot of attention with everyone driving around like they always do.
The bear climbed a tree and refused to come down due to the attention he was receiving. They don’t typically enjoy human interactions, they are highly confused by us.
The Department of Natural Resources was called in to handle the situation. But, how do you handle a bear in a tree? If leaving him alone isn’t an option you have to either kill or tranquilize the animal. Since it’s in town with a crowd, and it doesn’t appear to be sick or aggressive, killing him is not even close to an option.
They tranquilized the bear sitting high up in a tree, and it immediately starts to fall asleep among the branches.
They couldn’t let him bounce off the ground because that would certainly mess the bear up given he was 20+ feet in the air. So, they held a tarp out underneath trying to catch him.
Of course, the second you see a few dudes holding a tarp, you’re immediate reaction is, “do they really think they’re gonna catch it?”
And well, they sorta did…
As the bear skips off of branches on his way down they shuffle around trying to not get hit by it and actually catch the bear. The bear definitely hits the ground with a decent amount of force, but you have to imagine the tarp helped somewhat break the fall.
The video description provides more detail:
“A black bear was spotted in a tree in Downtown Grand Falls, New Brunswick. The tree was in the center of the boulevard with many stores already open for the day, and the bear attracted a lot of local attention.
Wildlife rescuers were on the scene to get the bear down safely, especially with about a hundred people gathered nearby. They shot the bear in the butt with a tranquilizer dart and the bear began to get drowsy, he climbed down a little before passing out and falling into a tarp held by four Wildlife Rangers to break his fall.
He was taken away in a bear cage.”
They managed to get him in the tarp and relocated the bear to safe territory out in the woods.
