By Leslie Wood
Staff writer

GALLUP — A group of hotel guests weren’t greeted by friendly Red Rock Inn personnel late Sunday night, but a 200-pound black bear.

The guests were unloading their luggage at about 11 when they saw the male bear roaming across the southern portion of the inn’s parking lot just off Aztec Avenue.

Romie Calderon, local animal control officer, said both the guests and bear were frightened by the encounter. The bear subsequently ran up a nearby tree and the guests into the nearest motel entrance.

“They were all scared,” Calderon said.

However, inn manager Falgoon Patel said no guests interacted with the bear.

“They were already asleep,” Patel said.

Local police and animal control officers were then called to the inn to handle the situation. Calderon said the bear growled occasionally at emergency personnel, but remained in the tree about 30-feet from the top.

A spotlight was positioned on the bear to ensure he remained in the tree and away from officers.

Calderon said animal control officers initially planned to tranquilize the bear to safely remove him from the tree, but metropolitan dispatch operators were able to contact officials from New Mexico’s Department of Game and Fish to handle the job.

Personnel shot a tranquilizer dart into the bear and waited about 10 minutes to approach the animal to ensure he was asleep. Calderon said the bear fell onto one of the tree’s branches and was then prodded onto the ground for transport. He was not harmed.

The animal will be released to the more remote Zuni Mountains between Bluewater and Grants. Officials suspect the bear is between 1 and 2 years old and was without his mother for the first time when he roamed into Gallup for food.

Calderon said he’s heard of two additional bear sightings this year in the Bluewater area.

Deputy Police Chief John Allen, a spokesman for the Gallup Police Department, said no injuries were reported during the encounter.

“Nobody was touched by the bear,” Allen said.
Mark Burdren, the local officer for New Mexico’s Department of Game and Fish, said the bear is currently contained in a bear cage behind his house and will be released into the wild this afternoon. Burdren said his wife made the animal peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to keep him full during his brief stay behind the couple’s home.

Burdren said the bear was not aggressive and described him as “pretty skinny” and in search of food.

Officials responded to a similar bear sighting last year at the Rehoboth Christian School campus. The bear was later euthanized because it had roamed into the area several times,