Black bear darts above white picket fence, crashes onto pole vault pad in Michigan neighborhood

A black bear perched above a white picket fence in a Michigan neighborhood created a surreal scene.

According to The Detroit News, police, firefighters, and state Department of Natural Resources staff were called Tuesday morning to the area of Francher and Mosher streets in Mount Pleasant, just north of the Central Michigan University campus, after a black bear climbed a tree in the neighborhood.

In a Facebook post by the City of Mount Pleasant Public Safety, the bear was shown sitting on a tree branch.

The DNR said the animal was a 150-pound male. Officials used a dart rifle to tranquilize the bear as residents watched.

It dropped about 18 feet onto a pole vault pad from Mount Pleasant High School, as shown in images obtained by WOOD TV8.

The bear was then tagged and moved to a swamp in Northern Michigan, and officials said neither the animal nor anyone was injured.

The DNR believes it likely wandered in from the Chippewa River corridor about 1.5 miles away.

The DNR estimates Lower Michigan has around 2,100 black bears, mostly in northern areas, and officials say the species has spread south and west over the past two decades.

As development expands into wildlife corridors and bears leave their dens in warm months to look for resources and mates, residential attractants such as trash, bird feeders, pet food, and grills can draw them deeper into human-populated areas.

Such encounters can raise risks for people, pets, and the bears themselves.

The state recommends removing easy food sources.

DNR wildlife biologist Mark Boersen told the News that the bear was "so far inside the city limits" that officials decided intervention was the safest option for both the public and the animal.

"Everything worked out well," he said after the relocation.

Boersen also warned that people across the Lower Peninsula should not assume a bear could never show up nearby.

"You may encounter a bear anywhere in the Lower Peninsula," he said, per the News.

After a separate recent sighting in Southeast Michigan, DNR wildlife biologist Zach Cooley said it may have marked the farthest-southeast location for a confirmed bear sighting in the state.

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