No, that wasn’t a new surveillance system above the Morristown Green early on Tuesday.
It was a rather large black bear, snoozing in a tree:
Video courtesy of @Morristown.NJ:
Our thanks to our friends from @Morristown.NJ, for permission to share their video, recorded at 12:20 a.m.
We’re pretty sure loitering ordinances prohibit sleepovers in the town square. Police kept an eye on the bruin; whether they issued any summonses is unclear. They did not respond to our requests for comment.
Maybe the bear wanted to be first in line for Sophie’s hot dog cart in the morning.
This episode wasn’t a first. A visiting bear entertained visitors for hours in October 2015. One spectator, vying for a Darwin Award, even tried to lure the beast from its perch with a doughnut.
MorristownGreen.com videos from 2015:
In June 2011, a bear scampered down South Street, with cops in hot pursuit. Three years earlier, a bear made an unannounced appearance at the Morris Plains Memorial Parade.
Such sightings, once novelties, are on the verge of becoming commonplace. The Star-Ledger reported this week that bear encounters across New Jersey so far in 2022 have more than doubled over the same period last year.
Although bear attacks are rare, they do happen: A Rutgers student was killed while hiking in West Milford in 2014. It’s the state’s only documented fatal attack by a bear.
The newspaper posted this video with helpful safety tips: