A black mountain bear was tranquilized at a garbage dump in Fresno, California, on Tuesday afternoon, the Associated Press reports. The bear had ridden there from the Hume Lake area, some 65 miles away, in the back of a garbage truck.

The bear was captured, unharmed, by Fresno police and California Department of Fish and Wildlife authorities. According to the Fresno Bee, the bear was spotted near a ponding basin at the Orange Avenue dump in south Fresno

From the Bee:

There were witnesses.

“He’s right in there,” a dump worker shouted to Lt. Joe Gomez, as he pointed to some heavy brush along Orange Avenue.

“That’s crazy,” someone said to Gomez.

“Yes, it is,” laughed Gomez, who serves as the police spokesman and now appeared to be ad hoc leader of a hastily assembled bear hunting expedition.

A wildlife biologist with California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, Dan Fidler, shot the young cub—only about a year old, the Bee reports, and weighing between 75 and 100 pounds—with a tranquilizer dart. He was put in the back of a Fish and Wildlife pickup truck to be returned to the mountains.


Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.