About a month after first making its appearance in Westport, a black bear forced the closure of the Westport Transfer Station for about half an hour early last Thursday morning.

Animal control officer Nicholas Vidmar said he got a call from his boss about it and went down to have a look. He got about 20 to 40 feet from it, he said.

“They were trying to open up and the bear walked across the driveway,” said Vidmar. “They delayed opening about 30 minutes and the bear moved on.”

The black bear was the same species that was seen near the Oriental Pearl and Bittersweet Farms in late July to early August, Vidmar said. And as he stressed a month ago, the public has nothing to fear but should leave it alone.

“These bears are just trying to find their area here,” he said. “They’re moving through. They’re going to be starting to hibernate in mid-November, early December. Now they’re just trying to find food.”

Though sighting the bear might alarm some, Vidmar said there’s no need to call animal control unless the situation escalates. Instead, he said residents should just keep their distance and use common sense:

“Don’t go near it. Just let it be. Don’t leave anything out that he can eat. Lock your trash bins.”

BBQ bear was a fake

Thursday’s sighting was real. But another sighting reported by Bootleg BBQ on Sunday was anything but. In a photo posted to the restaurant's Facebook page, a large brown bear is shown just left of the restaurant’s door. Two patrons peer out of the open doorway, and a man shields a child behind an open SUV door in the parking lot.

It looked convincing but “it was totally fake,” Melnyk said Monday. “The whole thing was staged. I have a very talented friend” who photoshopped the image and a few other friends helped out to stage the photo.

Melnyk said he thought staging the bear photo would be fun, and he was right — the post immediately went viral and as of Monday morning had been viewed more than 30,000 times.

Sunday evening, Melnyk called up his friend and asked how they could set the record state and come clean in a fun way. The result was another photoshopped image that he also posted to the restaurant’s Facebook page — the bear was gone, but Sasquatch  had taken its place.