A bear that rampaged through a supermarket for two days was lured out with food coated in honey, trapped and was said to be due to be put down.
Japan has a growing problem with bears, with a record six human fatalities from attacks and more than 9,000 of the animals killed in the previous fiscal year.
In the latest incident, police received an emergency call last Saturday that a bear had wounded a 47-year-old man in a supermarket in Akita on Japan’s main island of Honshu.
A gash on the man’s head “will take at least a week to heal once his stitches get removed, according to a doctor”, a police spokesman said.
The supermarket was evacuated with the animal left inside, where it laid waste to the meat department, according to the Asahi Shimbun daily.
Finally early yesterday, the bear walked into a trap containing “rice bran, bananas, apples and bread, all coated with honey”, an Akita official said.
“We prepared two traps and one of them captured the bear on the backyard side of the supermarket,” he said.
Human fatalities from bears in the fiscal year to March 31 included an elderly woman attacked in her garden and a fisherman whose severed head was found by a lake. — AFP
