Ferndale bear moved
<p>A grizzly bear takes a lunch break May 10 in the backyard of Melanie Meeks of Ferndale. The bear was trapped and relocated Tuesday.</p>
A young male grizzly bear that had been grazing on grass near homes in the Ferndale area has been captured and relocated.
The 120-pound bear was trapped Tuesday and released the same day in the Unawah Creek drainage along Hungry Horse Reservoir.
Melanie Meeks watched and took photographs of the bear from the back deck of her home on Kelley Drive just north of Swan Lake.
“He was eating grass for days. He loves our grass,” Meeks said. “We have 17 acres, so he would go in the woods and come back out and go back in the woods.”
Meeks said she called Tim Manley, a state grizzly bear management specialist, because of the bear’s continued presence.
“He was here for several days and I couldn’t do yard work,” she said.
Just after Manley set the culvert trap, the bear came out of the woods and “bee-lined it” to the trap after getting a whiff of the deer bait inside.
“We watched the whole thing from our bedroom window. It took about 45 minutes,” she said of the bear’s capture. “It was really fun to watch.”