Above: A Daily Freeman video about today's bear sighting at a Hurley elementary school.
It must have been tater tot day: The Freeman reports that a bear was spotted foraging in a dumpster at the Ernest C. Myer elementary school in Hurley this afternoon.
It's been a busy spring for bear sightings in upstate New York, and not just in the country.
Last week, YNN reported a rash of bear sightings around uptown Kingston. Bears have drawn gawking crowds and news reporters in North Greenbush and Schenectady recently. And in the most dramatic local bear tale yet, a young bear dubbed "Orange 425" met an untimely end at the University of Albany last Thursday, after three failed attempts to move him to more suitable habitat in the Catskills.
The Times-Union's Casey Seiler waxes poetic about the bear who loved Albany not wisely, but too well:
Has our garbage really become that delicious? Is this yet another manifestation of nature gone wild after a freakishly warm winter with almost no snow? Or are bears as susceptible as U.S. presidents to the lure of Tech Valley?
Wildlife experts who spoke to Fitzgerald noted that the springtime mating season often sees younger male bears driven out of the woods by older bears attempting to hog the affections of females.
It's especially apt, then, that Orange 425 should have met his end on that landscape of chastity, an American university campus.
