Thursday, August 02, 2007
Police, game officials chase bear
An unlikely visitor took to the streets of Northeast Roanoke, and police and game officials gave chase.
Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times
A dogged bear lopes down Shenandoah Avenue Northeast with two tranquilizer darts in its body.
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The black bear's head popped up over the hill near the train tracks.
And then it was off to the races again, loping east on Shenandoah Avenue with tranquilizer darts dangling from its side and police officers on its tail.
The 140-pound adult female ran loose for hours in Northeast Roanoke on Wednesday until it finally succumbed to the effects of the tranquilizers.
Wednesday evening, officials from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries were taking the bear to Blacksburg, where Virginia Tech professor Michael Vaughan hoped to use it for his captive-bear research.
The bear was first spotted about 11:30 a.m. near Snappy Food Mart at Plantation and Liberty roads, said police spokeswoman Aisha Johnson.
An approaching train scared the animal away before police got there, Johnson said.
At some point, a train engineer radioed Norfolk Southern dispatcher Rebecca Ashwell and reported seeing a bear heading his way along the tracks.
"The train was going north," Ashwell said. "The bear was coming south."
The bear also was spotted near Hollins Road and Rhodes Avenue and near the post office on Rutherford Avenue.
Diana Holley, 61, of Roanoke said she was in the post office when she heard about the bear outside and decided to check it out.
"A lady yelled out in the post office ... and of course I wanted to see the bear," Holley said. "He was rather thin-looking, by himself, lost."
By about 2 p.m., the bear was lying in a patch of woods behind Roanoke Gas Co. in the 500 block of Kimball Avenue, surrounded by the police.
The bear ultimately ran west along the tracks with police giving chase, and then turned back and ran back along Shenandoah Avenue.
The bear was hit with tranquilizer darts fired by a city animal control officer and a Game Department official, Johnson said. Police officers also fired a beanbag gun and a pepper-ball gun at the animal.
It finally gave up in a wooded area behind a Norfolk Southern building near Kimball and Orange avenues, Johnson said.
"Sometimes when it gets hot, the darts take a little longer to take effect," said Dan Lovelace, a district wildlife biologist for the Game Department.
Vaughan, a professor of wildlife science, was at Virginia Tech's bear pens to receive the animal, which was still groggy from the tranquilizer darts.
Vaughan said he will use the bear for his reproductive physiology research.
As a possible explanation for the bear's visit, Vaughan noted that dry conditions can create a lack of natural food, forcing bears to forage elsewhere.
"That might explain why she was in town," he said.
Staff writer Annie Johnson contributed to this report.
