"Well, my goodness. How often do you see a bear on Cape Cod?" said Marion Larson, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. "It's really cool and people are really excited about it."
A Cape Cod Times reporter told the paper she spotted the bear around 6 a.m. Thursday and said it bounded across the road like a puppy.
The bear, likely a male about 3 years old weighing 150 to 200 pounds, has been seen near a chicken coop, a cranberry bog, a golf course, and more than a dozen other locations along a 60-mile stretch of the Cape from Sandwich east to Provincetown.
Now that the bear has reached the tip of the Cape, wildlife officials say they may attempt to immobilize and move it to an area where other bears live. Officials say it's possible the bear could retrace its steps and head west.
The bear can only be tranquilized if officials can isolate it in a tree or some other confined space, said Laura Conlee, the state's bear expert. Another option would be to try to catch it in a trap that basically consists of two 55-gallon steel drums welded together and then move it elsewhere.
But Ruth Anne Cowing, a Provincetown police officer who handles animal-control duties for the town, said officials there are hoping the bear will retrace its steps and get out of town. So far it has stayed mostly in the woods and retreated every time it's seen a person.
But she says the area is just too congested to let the bear stay where it is.
"Now he's at the very end so he needs to make a decision or we'll make it for him," she said. "We think he's here looking for a mate. . . . We're hoping he realizes he's the only one here, and he turns around and goes back home."
