Am apparently hungry bear set off alarms and a massive, if unsuccessful, hunt over the weekend, after it tried to break into a barn in Hedmark County housing 85 lambs.
Brith Karin Lund of Løiten, just east of Hamar in eastern Norway, had a bit of a scare after the bear attacked her barn and managed to tear off a few planks.
“The yard is full of bear tracks, the barn wall is full of claw marks and planks have been torn off the door to where all sheep are,” Lund told newspaper Nationen. Lund’s neighbour also could see signs of a visit by the bear, where it tore down a feeding station for small birds and ate most of their seeds, reported newspaper Hedmark Arbeiderblad.
The bear was also sighted the next day, when it reportedly was going through a garbage bin outside a house.
The drama late last week resulted in emergency issuance of a permit to hunt down the bear and a hunting team was quickly assembled. It reportedly spotted the bear on Friday, and fired off a shot, but it wasn’t clear whether the bear was hit.
It wasn’t found, at any rate, according to sheriff Audun Fremstad in Løiten.
The hunt continued on Saturday but operations leader Geir Bekkedahl of the Hedmark Police District reported that it still hadn’t been tracked down. A few reports of observations of the bear indicated it hadn’t been shot because it didn’t seem injured.
Bekkedahl called for calm and claimed there was no imminent danger to the people of Løiten.
“The moose hunt is on, so unless we get any more reports of trouble, the bear hunt is over for now,” Bekkedahl told newspaper Aftenposten.
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