A young and frightened black bear that wandered through east Casper on Wednesday has been tranquilized and is being taken to his new adventure, a Wyoming Game and Fish spokeswoman said.

"At 6:45 this evening we were able to safely immobilize the black bear on the east side of town, and we were able to load him up into the bear trap to safely move him to his new home, which will be somewhere in the Laramie Range," Janet Milek said.

The Casper field office of the Game and Fish Department received the first call about the bear at 6:30 a.m. The office would receive several more calls by late afternoon.

Department officials, with the help of the Casper Police Department, had been tracking the yearling bear's wanderings through the neighborhoods on East 12th Street east of Wyoming Boulevard.

The bear, scared of suburban life, had made its way into the yard of people who lived on Newport Street and went to sleep under an aspen tree, Milek said. "The day had just worn him out from all of the stress."

The homeowners, on the other hand, were not stressed about having a bear in their yard and let it be while they waited for the biologists from the department, she said.

At that point, the biologists assessed the bear's weight, size and other factors to prepare for an effective tranquilizer, Milek said. "What you need is to make sure is that you make a safe shot for the bear, a safe shot for the humans and the public around, and you're trying not to stress it."

Once the bear was tranquilized, two biologists placed the bear on a blanket and lifted it into a waiting bear trap hitched to a pickup.

They gave the bear a drug to reverse the effects of the tranquilizer drug, because they didn't want him to be asleep for very long, Milek said. "We closed the lid (of the trap) and by the time they were on their way out of town he was already up and walking around."

This bear was not aggressive nor apparently annoyed that it was tranquilized, captured, awakened and transported far away from the land of its birth, she said.

"I'm guessing that this guy is going to be so tired and so happy to be free that he is just going to race out of the back of that bear trap into his new home and not have to worry about people or houses or cars."

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