GLENDALE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- He’s young, he’s fast, he’s big and he has people second-guessing what they’ve seen.
“Probably a good hundred yards away I seen this, what I thought was a big black lab,” Glenn Dowding said, a Glendale resident who saw the creature.
It was a young black bear roaming through a subdivision in Glendale, Kentucky, which is West of I-65 and not far from Elizabethtown.
Delana Blackstone got a call from her husband around 7:30 Wednesday morning, who caught the bear on video.
“He said, a bear just ran out in front of me in the road and I said, ‘a bear?” Blackstone said.
A bear that was just looking for a mate, according to wildlife officials, and he seems to be causing more excitement than panic.
“If I was going to name that bear, I'd have to name him Yogi because he sort of reminded me of Yogi Bear in a distance,” Dowding said.
This isn't the first time we've seen a bear this year. On June 23, a black bear was caught on camera swimming in Lake Cumberland. It’s a site wildlife officials said we might want to get used to.
“This time of year the bear sightings go up because those young males are out roaming around looking for new country. Once they figure out there's no other bears in the area, they'll go back to where they came from,” Kentucky Fish and Wildlife official Sergeant David Kuhn said.
In this case, the bear may have come from the mountains of southeastern Kentucky.
If you are outdoors this summer, the chances of spotting a bear are unlikely, but not impossible. Wildlife officials said don’t panic, don't approach the bear, but also don't run away from it. Instead make loud noises, like clapping, to try and scare it away.
“Definitely don't try to get it cornered, don't try feeding it, just let it be and it will naturally just go back, Sgt. Kuhn said.
Because this black bear was roaming around people's homes, Blackstone wanted to share the video her husband took on Facebook as a light warning.
“Just to let the people know here in Glendale, you might want to make sure your little kiddos are inside, if you have little dogs,” Blackstone said.
But most are just delighted to see one of nature's creatures that they've never seen before, in regions of the state that haven't seen them in modern times.
“Seeing one here in this neighborhood, yeah that's pretty neat,” Dowding said.