The Ministry of Natural Resources safely removed a bear from a tree at residence in Chelmsford on Oct. 18.
According to the home owner and a neighbour, the bear had been frequenting the area for a few days and had been spending much of the day up in the crab apple tree.
“Monday morning my neighbour saw the bear up there and I told him to call the police and the MNR,” said Ronald Bradley, who lives across the street from where the bear was spotted.
“It left sometime last night but then it came back again this morning so at around 2 p.m. I called the police and they showed up here at around 2:30 p.m.”
The home on Charlotte Avenue in Chelmsford is right across the street from St. Charles School, and that was the main concern for Bradley.
“There's kids walking by here going to school,” said Bradley. “There was a young girl who was having some trouble with her bike and stopped pretty much right under the tree so I called out to her to keep moving because of the bear.”
Bradley has lived in his home on Charlotte Avenue since 1959, and this is the first time he's seen a bear this close to his home.
“There's a lot of bears by the train tracks, but this is the first I've seen come this close,” he said.
The MNR showed up at around 4 p.m. and tranquillized the bear, which the MNR officer estimated to be around 85 lbs and at most, two-years-old.
The bear was tagged and carted away from the home. The MNR officer declined to comment where the bear would be taken.
Claude Courchene is the owner of the home where the bear was spotted, and said he had no issue with the animal, but was cognizant of the risk the bear could pose to the school children.
“The bear has been coming by here for a couple of days and seems pretty harmless,” said Courchene. “But because the school is there it's better to be safe.”
Courchene also said that he saw a much larger bear wandering the area on Sunday evening (Oct. 16) that may have been the cub's mother, but he had not seen it again since.
