An unexpected visitor showed up at a Petersburg, Alaska, grocery store looking for the bare necessities this week — a black bear cub.

The cub stopped in at the store on Tuesday, prompting Petersburg Police Department officers and Alaska Wildlife Troopers to show up and catch the bear. 

Body camera footage released Thursday shows law enforcement cornering the cub near the fresh produce aisle and the shopping cart storage area.

Ultimately, however, the cub was not let back into the wild. After consultation with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the decision was made to euthanize the solo cub.

Alaska State Troopers Public Information Officer Justin Freeman told KTUU-TV that “we euthanized the bear for a variety of factors. The bear was small and emaciated for this time of year. It did not have any measure of fat that would have sustained it through the winter. It was also abandoned, for unknown reasons, and therefore did not have any way to significantly acquire resources to recover from its condition.”

There were also no holding facilities capable of taking in the cub, whose gender was not specified – and troopers doubted that the cub would have been able to handle the stress of being transported to such a facility.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.