Video shows Vancouver bear riding garbage truck
In downtown Vancouver, Canada, a bear takes a ride on a garbage truck. The bear is thought to have been foraging in the dumpster. It was tranquilized and returned to the wild.
A black bear took a ride through Vancouver, Canada, on the back of a dump truck, a journey caught on video by stunned downtown residents.
The Vancouver Courier said the "hitchhiking bear" was lucky to be alive.
“The bear was sitting on top of the truck like he was king of the world,” conservation officer Alex Desjardins told The Globe and Mail.
After the bear was spotted, police cordoned off the area and called Desjardins, who tranquilized the 600-pound bear, thought to be one or two years old. One theory is that the bear was in the dumpster when the truck came along to collect the trash.
The bear sighting caused a flurry of comments on Twitter, under the hashtag #downtownbear.
According to the Globe, one tweet read, “We should never have pulled out of Kyoto." Another said: “Why couldn’t we have tranquilized the Boston Bruins when they came to town?”
The Vancouver Sun reported that the bear was released Tuesday near a stream in the Squamish Valley, British Columbia.
"There's salmon running in the streams right now so there's lots of food and there's good denning sites nearby. It will give the bear the best chance of survival," Desjardins told the Sun. "He needs to fatten up more and likely will hibernate in a few weeks."
The Vancouver Public Library posted a series of photos of the "downtown bear."
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