Bear or Boar?

Phone calls from the media kept chief detective Seimen Coppola busy all day on Monday, July 21.

Coppola, the police spokesman in the town of Dillenburg, remained firm: There was no evidence for the presence of a brown bear, but police will continue to check out reported sightings.

"Some believe it, some don't," Coppola said.

But Jochen Walter insists he saw a bear when he was out for a run on Sunday.

"I'm sure. It was a bear. Someone else is bound to see it," said Walter, described by police as a level-headed, credible person.

Walter said he saw the animal under fruit trees.

"I heard this grunting and all of a suddenly it was staring at me," he said.

He called the police, who sent patrol cars and a helicopter, but found nothing in the area. Police called in two naturalists, who said the droppings and footprints were "probably" from a boar, not a bear.

A long way from home

Germany's last bear mania was in June 2006, when a 2-year-old Italian bear dubbed Bruno entered the country. Bruno was not shy and marauded through farms and small towns for weeks till he was shot.

Dillenburg police say they have checked out whether any circuses have lost a bear and have also consulted with hunters, foresters, veterinarians and "bear-ologists" at the Frankfurt and Cologne zoos.

Naturalists say it is nigh on impossible that a wild bear from the Alps or eastern Europe could have sneaked to Dillenburg, 75 kilometers (47 miles) north of Frankfurt.

"A domesticated one could have got away. Someone might have owned one without permission," suggested Sibylle Winkel of the Hesse state Nature Protection Society. "Bears don't land somewhere by magic."

The state of Hesse is a long way from bear country. Wolves have been known to sneak long distances, but not bears. Besides, to get to Dillenburg, a bear would have to cross the length of Bavaria, the state that ordered Bruno shot.

"No bear could get through Bavaria," Winkel said.

Stuffed and displayed in a Munich museum, Bruno proves that.