Mother’s Day in Traverse City Featured Bear Sleeping in a Tree

Michigan has its share of black bears and one drew a big crowd on Mother's Day while taking a nap in a residential area of Traverse City.

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Michigan Black Bears Like Visiting the City

There is no doubt that some Michigan black bears like to visit the city.

Once a bear discovers some easy food to find, it will usually return again and again.

Black bears feed at night and often after an evening foraging in the city, the bear will climb a tree and sleep off the food hangover. This has happened in West Michigan several times in the past 5 years.

Back in 2019, a black bear visited the Indian Trails Golf Course in Southeast Grand Rapids. The same year a black bear was seen strolling down Alpine Avenue in Walker. In 2021, a bear cub was seen hanging around West River Drive and 131 in Grand Rapids.

Traverse City had a 500-pound black bear that became a regular in many neighborhoods in 2021, he was caught once and taken nearly 100 miles away but he found his way back and unfortunately, the DNR wound up euthanizing the bear. Needless to say, this is somewhat common in Michigan. Traverse City recently had another visitor.

Black Bear Draws a Crowd on Mother's Day in Traverse City

You would hope that the only crowds on Mother's Day would be at area churches or at large celebrations for moms. That wasn't the case in a Traverse City neighborhood where families woke up to a crowd watching the Department of Natural Resources try and remove a bear from a tree.

The bear climbed up a tree after a night of foraging in the residential neighborhood. The DNR had to use tranquilizer darts to get the animal to sleep before it fell out of the tree onto some mattresses that were put below by the homeowner.

Don't worry, the bear had a safe fall onto some mattresses before being hauled an hour out of town and safely released back into the wild. Check out these photos from the Traverse City Record-Eagle to see how the whole operation went down.