Black bears foraging for food from garbage bins are frightening some residents in Fredericton neighbourhoods this summer.

Lisa Johnstone was up late a few nights ago, nursing her four-month-old daughter, when she heard a loud noise outside her Granada Avenue home.

When she investigated, Johnstone said she noticed a neighbour’s garbage can had been knocked over. She’d seen the garbage tipped before, she said, but usually it was the result of foraging raccoons.

"I woke up my husband and told him I was scared," she said. "So he came out, and we were both looking, then all of a sudden this bear stood up by my car."

Johnstone said she can laugh about it now, but she was petrified at the time.

"It walked around the front of our house, across to the neighbours and went in their garbage. It then went behind their house. We didn’t see it for a few minutes, and then it came back to the front of our house and behind our house and then into the woods," she said.

Her neighbour, Kim McCloskey-Lint, who has two young sons, said she won’t let them play alone outdoors anymore, after hearing about the bear walking around her house.

"It is kind of scary to know they’re coming this close to properties and homeowners. I just hope they can catch it and move it somewhere safe," McCloskey-Lint said.

Peter Perry, with the provincial Department of Natural Resources in Welsford, said Monday he's had more than 100 bear complaints this summer, and bear sightings are usually more common in the spring, not July.

Most of the calls were from people reporting damage to their property, he said, but some were also reporting close encounters with the hungry bruins.

Even baiting bear traps with peanut butter and jam sandwiches, molasses, and licorice isn’t doing the trick this year, Perry said.

"We’re not having very good success. We’re competing with the compost bins. So, we’ve decided that maybe by midweek, we’re going to take other alternatives. We may have to destroy the bear," Perry said.

While the bears haven’t hurt anyone, Perry said children sometimes get a little too close to the animals.

"We just don’t want to take that chance of kids getting in between the sow and cubs. Normally, the sow will put the cubs up the tree and human nature, being as it is, kids may approach the tree and look at the little cubs, and mom’s not too far away," he said. "So, public safety is No. 1."

If you should find yourself face to face with a bear, Perry said it’s not wise to play dead.

"Shout, make yourself known. Make sure the bear is aware that you’re there, and back away and give it its due distance. It’s still a wild animal. Just back away, and don’t run because you can’t outrun a black bear," Perry said.

The number of bears making themselves at home in the city is unusual, he said, and it may be because fewer hunters from the United States are coming to hunt black bear in the province.