Wildlife Officials Sedate, Relocate Bear Found In Central Denver

DENVER (CBS4) -- A young bruin hit paydirt in his quest for fine dining in Denver, but it was a one-night stay in the big city. The black bear earned a dart in the backside and a ride back into the high country Friday.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials tranquilized the bear in the 2400 block of South Jackson Street after a day fence-hopping back yards in the University Park neighborhood.

It is not a neighborhood that homeowners thought they'd need to worry about wildlife encounters.

"I'm a Denver native," said a resident, Carleen. "I have hiked and run trails all over Colorado. I've never seen a bear."

Carleen said a tree trimmer who was scheduled to work in her back yard called the house this morning and said, "We can't come on your property because you have a bear."

"We were like, 'What are you talking about?'"

Then she and her husband found the broken flower pots.

"He destroyed some of our pots trying to get to bird feeders," Carleen wrote in a social media post. "Poor guy just wants food."

He evidently found a great deal of it. 'Pooh' left, well, lots of poo in Carleen's back yard.

The bear, estimated to be three years old and 120 pounds, was first seen on neighborhood security cameras at 1 a.m.  He escaped wildlife officers for most of the day, but was darted at dusk.