Residents of the Fort Richmond area of Winnipeg awoke to some excitement Tuesday morning after police and wildlife authorities were called to the neighbourhood to deal with a bear.

A newspaper carrier spotted a black bear wandering between houses near King's Park around 4 a.m. and called police.

Conservation officers chased the bear into a yard on Laval Drive.

Tim Morrison was just waking up and putting his dog outside his Laval Drive home when he noticed police cars flipping their lights and sirens on and off in his front yard.

"Eventually I noticed that they were all looking up, and I looked up into the tree and noticed a big dark shape," he said.

"I went back up to my bedroom, because my bedroom window is right beside this tree, and I looked out the window and noticed the bear in my tree."

The officers were using their sirens to keep the bear treed until officers from Manitoba Conservation could shoot it with a tranquillizer dart.

"That sort of spooked him a bit and he climbed higher but then he eventually came back to where he originally was and kept yawning and yawning. He sort of — you could see him getting drowsy in his head — he sort of lied down on the one branch, then he just fell to the ground."

It took several officers to carry the bear into a truck, Morrison said. The animal was then removed from the area.

The bear will be released later Tuesday deep in the Sandilands Provincial Forest, in the southeast corner of the province, said officials with Manitoba Conservation.

Morrison said the bear was a surprise: the only other wildlife he's seen in his yard is a skunk.