Bear cub leads cops on hours-long chase

CALGARY, Alberta, Sept. 4 (UPI) -- A bear cub kept police in Calgary, Alberta, busy for hours on a suburban chase that included a helicopter and fire department cherry-picker truck, police said.

Residents began calling police Saturday around 9 a.m. about a 150-pound black bear cub wandering through a residential area, the Calgary Sun said.

Officers responded and began a frustrating chase as the bear kept popping up in different locations, the Calgary Herald reported.

Police decided to deploy a helicopter equipped with heat-sensing cameras to pinpoint the bear's location, Inspector Paul Stacey told the Herald.

"We were watching the infrared and we could see it," he said. "The camera panned off and it came back and there was no bear there."

After several hours, officers spotted the cub up a tree. Animal services personnel were summoned to shoot a tranquilizer dart at the cub, but it was too far up for an accurate shot, the reports said.

The fire department sent a cherry-picker truck to lift the officer up, and the first shot got the cub, the reports said.

The sedated animal slid to the ground and was taken by wildlife officials to be released into the wild, well away from the city, Stacey said.