http://www.wbay.com/story/14646614/2011/05/14/black-bear-found-in-green-bay-neighborhood
--------------------

Black Bear Found in Green Bay Neighborhood
Updated: May 14, 2011 5:22 PM

Authorities say a 150-pound black bear is now back where he belongs after wandering into a Green Bay neighborhood early this morning.

When Conservation Warden Andy Lundin got the call around 6:00 this morning, he wasn't expecting to hear what he did. "It caught me off guard," he says. "I had to say, 'Are you sure it's a bear?' and of course dispatch said, 'yup.'"

By that time the one-year-old black bear was up in a tree in the heart of a residential area. Police quickly set up a perimeter on the 1100 block of Oregon Street. "They kept peeking around the garage and the house and they were holding their guns and then they'd laugh so I knew it wasn't like a perpetrator or something scary," says Linda Kurowski, who lives nearby.

Officials say it's rare to see a bear wander that far into the city. But Warden Lundin thinks he knows what happened. "I would imagine that bear probably worked its way through along the river and just ended up in this person's backyard," he explains.

According to Lundin, authorities would usually try to scare the bear back into the wild. "In this particular case, he was so far into town that it would've just created a little bit more of a safety risk to allow that procedure to happen," he says.

So they say they were left with no choice but to tranquilize him. Officials say it took more than four hours to gather all the necessary equipment. "When it was hit with a tranquilizer dart, it climbed up a little bit and it came back down, and it remained there until it fell out of the tree. and fortunate the fall was maybe 6 or 8 feet," Lundin explains.

Lundin says he's glad he didn't have to use lethal force. Instead the bear is now free in Northern Oconto County.