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Video: Bear falls from backyard tree after being tranquilized in R.I.
"Watching it fall was surreal."
Some incredible videos and photos of black bears (or possibly the same bear) were captured over the weekend after bears (or a bear) wandered close to civilization in Foxborough, Attleboro, and Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
The first video was taken in Foxborough on Friday after a bear made its way to the edge of the roadway on Route 140 near Jake n Joes Sports Grille.
According to The Attleboro Sun-Chronicle, a bear was then seen walking around Attleboro Saturday. It first strolled around a residential neighborhood before exploring the grounds of an elementary school.
A bear was spotted in nearby Pawtucket on Sunday, and it decided to knock over a grill and eat a steak.
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Pawtucket resident Chris Bertrand said the bear was first seen wandering around a couple blocks from his house on Jutras Street.
“He then made his way to my street, finding one of the only trees in the area,” Bertrand said.
The bear was a young male, approximately 170 pounds, The Boston Globe reported.
The state Department of Environmental Management (DEM) responded and waited for the bear to come down, but it just sat there, Bertrand said.
After waiting for over an hour, environmental police tranquilized it, causing it to fall out of the tree. This is standard procedure if a bear enters a populated area, won’t leave, and can’t be scared off into nearby woodlands.
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Amazingly, Bertrand managed to capture the moment the bear fell out of the tree on video. You can see the bear hanging onto the tree at the beginning of the video, and a few seconds later it slips off, falling about two stories.
“Watching it fall was surreal,” Bertrand said.
Rhode Island Fish and Game biologist Morgan Lucot told reporters they checked the bear for injuries after the fall and confirmed that he was not hurt. She said bears have lots of padding and that his muscles were relaxed by the tranquilizer, which would help prevent injury.
“Bears are really tough animals. We think of people, but all wildlife is just so much tougher than a human,” Environmental Police Officer Harold Guise said during a press conference. “When you spend your whole life climbing trees, you’re gonna take a fall from time to time. So we weren’t that concerned about the fall.”
More on local black bears:
Once the bear was on the ground, environmental police carried him away from the backyard. Lucot said they took him to Buck Hill Management Area in Burrillville, Rhode Island, where he should have plenty of room.
Environmental police watched the bear wake up and walk away before leaving to make sure he was OK, Lucot said. She told reporters he is unlikely to return to Pawtucket.
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“Even though he got a little bit of a steak dinner, I don’t think he looked at Pawtucket and thought, ‘This is where a bear belongs,'” she reportedly said.
According to the DEM, there are few resident black bears in Rhode Island. Most bears seen in the state are roaming males that were born in Massachusetts or Connecticut.
Still, the department said, the black bear population in Rhode Island is expected to increase as their populations in other states continue to grow.
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