New Jersey Bear Spotted Walking on Hind Legs
— -- It’s a bear! It’s a human! No, it’s a bear walking on its two hind legs like a human – at least that what it looks like.
That was the you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it scene captured early Monday morning by 22-year-old New Jersey resident Ian Bohman while on his way to workout.
“I was walking out to my car and turned the corner and there it was just walking straight up the street,” Bohman told ABC News. “It stopped and looked at me and I pulled out my cell phone and it kept walking.”
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The bear walked to a garbage can in Bohman’s Oak Ridge, N.J., neighborhood and then, after seeing that it was empty, kept walking on its hind two legs until it got into the woods behind the neighborhood and went back on all fours.
“It was surreal,” said Bohman, who posted the video on YouTube, where it has already been viewed over 300,000 times.
Even more surreal, according to Bohman, is the fact that the bear is what he describes as “kind of famous” in his hometown, having been spotted before prowling for food and walking on its hind legs.
“A couple of months ago there was a video that surfaced of the bear walking but the video was far away and hard to see,” he said. “I was just literally in the perfect spot that morning.”
An expert told ABC News that the bear is likely walking upright as a result of an injury.
“More than likely it was a car accident,” Kelsey Burgess, from the New Jersey Department of Fish, Game and Wildlife, told ABC News. “He was banged by a car. ... Bears can walk on their hind legs very well. It's just they don't choose to do so unless they're forced to.”
But some suspicious viewers think his spot might be too perfect and that the video might be hoax.
Bohman did not call authorities after spotting the bear Monday morning but says he believes they are aware of its multiple sightings throughout the Oak Ridge area.
A call placed today by ABC News to the Jefferson Township Police Department, with jurisdiction over Oak Ridge, was not immediately returned.
Oak Ridge is located in an area of northern New Jersey, where bear sightings, according to Bohman, are relatively common. This particular bear, he says, did not look well.
“When I saw it, it did look a little skinny and it was sad seeing it looking into an empty garbage can,” he said.
