A wandering black bear spent six hours on Christmas Eve 1999 between two buildings in an industrial zone of Klamath Falls, Ore. The bear apparently wandered down from KAGO Hill, on the town’s west side.
Police first spotted it on Greensprings Drive about 7:30 p.m., but it ran away, showing up two hours later near the downtown Safeway store, the present-day location of Holiday Market.
When police and state wildlife personnel caught up with it, it had settled down between two buildings, either stuck or too tired to move. The pursuers avoided killing the bear, but as the hours passed that became more of a possibility.
Sirens and flashlights failed to prod it toward a steel culvert trap at one end of the narrow passage, but when harmless beanbags were fired, the 200-pound bear reared up, spun around and bounded into the trap.
Later, wildlife personnel set the bear free in an eastern Klamath County location said to be “as far as possible from Klamath Falls without getting too close to Lakeview.”
Source: Bragg, John and Todd Kepple. "Big Bear Stuck in KF for Christmas." Herald and News, 27 Dec. 1999, p. 1.