A nearly 500 pound black bear was left to sleep off what local residents suggested was a fermented apple hangover Thursday night after he went on a rampage through a Port Coquitlam neighbourhood and then passed out in a bramble bush.
Local resident Alex Petrie first spotted the bear sleeping on his front porch in the 1800 block of Oxford Street around 6 a.m. local time.
He called the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, which closed local roads and put one school on lockdown.
Officers set to work trying to corral the bear after the animal woke up.
Their goal was to get the bear onto the main road and down to the Coquitlam River, according to Conservation Officer Jack Trudgian.
“That’s what we were trying to do,” he told reporters. “It didn’t work out that way.”
The bear ran between houses and from yard to yard, at times chasing officers who were tailing him.
“We tried pepper spray, we tried rubber bullets, we tried bear bangers,” Trudgian said. “But I think because the bear is so tired and it’s so big, it is just exhausted.”
Local residents, who are used to spotting black bears in the area, said the animal was one of the biggest they had ever seen.
“I think it’s been eating too many apples,” resident Michael Sonntag said. “I think some of it is fermented and I think he’s sleeping off a pretty stiff hangover.”
After the officers barricaded the bear in the bramble bushes, they left the scene late Thursday to let the animal sleep.
The bear is not believed to be a “garbage bear,” meaning it was not prowling the community looking for food. Its size suggests it has had enough to eat, and was putting on weight to prepare for winter hibernation.
