Bear nabbed in neighborhood tree
(West Haven-WTNH) _ Some scary moments in a West Haven neighborhood Saturday morning. Residents spotted a bear in their midst. Not the kind of thing you normally see in a residential neighborhood.
News Channel 8's Leon Collins reports.

Mike Cavaliere didn't believe when his neighbors told him. After all, April Fools Day was last month.

Mike Cavaliere: "They just like, Mike there's a bear at the bottom of your hill, 'Where?', he showed me and there it was in the tree. It was a good sized bear."

And there it was plain as day. A black bear way up a tree, attracting an awful of of attention apparently after a wild Friday night.

Mike Cavaliere: "They said he was there all night. I didn't heart any sirens or anything. They said he was over there terrorizing the campus over at UNH."

Firefighters are trained for these kinds of things, I think, and rescuers from the Department of Environmental Protection chipped in because this isn't your usual cat up a tree story.

Mike Cavaliere: "They had the rangers go up and they darted him up in the tree and then he got tranquilized and then he came down."

They managed to get 'Smokey' down, and they checked his vitals. After all, any bear would be stressed after this kind of Saturday morning.

He was fine, so they put him in a tubular bear cage and took him back to the wild where he was safe from whatever it is about West Haven that this bear found alluring in the first place.

Mike Cavaliere: "It was just something to see in the middle of town, a bear. This is something I see usually when I'm at my house in Vermont."

And this wasn't the only bear sighting recently. Earlier this week a black bear was sighted in Shelton. It weighed between 150-200 pounds.

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