Moment wildlife officer helps remove a bucket that was stuck on the head of a Denver bear for a week

Video captured the moment wildlife officers helped remove a bucket that was stuck – for a week – on the head of a bear in Denver.  

Colorado Parks and Wildlife posted video of the rescue to Facebook on Thursday, calling it a ‘wildlife rescue success story.’  

The bear spent a whole week running around the foothills west of Boulder with a chicken feeder stuck on its head but when residents reported it, wildlife officers were able to track her down. 

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The rescue was set in motion by Boulder residents Drew McConaughy and his friend Dave Sherman who spotted the bear while working on a cabin in the foothills, The Denver Channel reported. 

‘We were just sitting having lunch around noon and we heard a rustle down in the woods, so we went down to investigate, and we saw the bear running through the woods, the one with the bucket on its head,’ McConaughy told the Channel.

Once they saw what turned out to be a chicken feeder covering the animal’s entire head, they called Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

‘We figured that the bear was probably in distress,’ McConaughy said.

They chased the bear and cornered it until it climbed a tree, then they did all they could to keep it there until wildlife officials arrived.

When they did arrive, officers used McConaughy’s ladder to get to the bear, then tranquilized her so they could safely remove the bucket. Video showed the sedated bear laid out on the ground while a wildlife officer cuts the bucket off her head.   

‘We rely on the public a great amount to help us, reporting activity and in this case helping us to locate this bear,’ Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman Jason Clay told the Denver Channel. 

Once the chicken feeder was removed, the bear returned to the mountains, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said.

But wildlife officers also reinforced its fear of humans by hazing the bear. 

 ‘A bear naturally should be afraid of humans. The case in point of how this bear got into that situation in the first place is that it broke into someone’s chicken coop and got that feeder stuck on its head,’ Clay said.

The wildlife center said it’s crucial residents lock up anything that could attract bears to avoid another situation like this. 

But although the bear is back in the wild, it made an impression on one of the neighbors who helped get with its rescue.   

‘This bear has a positive light from here on out,’ McConaughy said.