the biggest stir.

Moore, who's been on the job 33 years, said he's heard of bears showing up in all sorts of strange places, but never among the restaurants and bars in the Market.

When he arrived on the scene, the 75-kilogram juvenile male was about nine metres off the ground, up a tree, and surrounded by police.

Moore shot the animal with tranquilizer darts as conservation officers held out a huge net near the ground. They braced for the impact of a falling bear -- but the groggy mammal stayed on its perch.

One of Moore's colleagues climbed a ladder set up by the fire department. The officer tied a rope around the bear's front paws and they carefully extracted the animal from the tree.

"We had two shots before we puthim to sleep and even then he didn't fall completely asleep -- so we had to be pretty fast to put him inside the cage," said Moore, whose team later released it back into the wild.

While it's been a busy stretch, Moore said the activity is still far quieter than the fall of 1995 when authorities removed 160 bears from the region, mostly on the Quebec side.

"It was just incredible -- there were black bears all over the place," he said.

Over the years, Moore can't recall hearing about any bear attacks in the region. Black bears, he added, don't really pose a threat to humans as long as people leave them alone.

But he stressed there are rules to follow when you encounter a bear.

"People take selfies with black