Sleeping in the park: Bear takes snooze on the Morristown Green

0

 

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:

 

If you’ve read this far… you clearly value your local news. Now we need your help to keep producing the local coverage you depend on! More people are reading Morristown Green than ever. But costs keep rising. Reporting the news takes time, money and hard work. We do it because we, like you, believe an informed citizenry is vital to a healthy community.

So please, CONTRIBUTE to MG or become a monthly SUBSCRIBER. ADVERTISE on Morristown Green. LIKE us on Facebook, FOLLOW us on Twitter, and SIGN UP for our newsletter.

LEAVE A REPLY