Tamarack the burned bear cub before he escaped his enclosure in South Lake Tahoe, July 2021.

A bear cub who won the hearts of Tahoe residents last year after being severely burned in the Tamarack wildfire and then escaped into the wild in bandages has been reportedly seen again.

Tamarack the bear — named by his rescuers at Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care — is seemingly alive and well, and was having a whale of a time recently playing with a toy bear in a South Lake Tahoe creek. 

In a video dated May 23 and posted last week by Tahoe Toogee, an Instagram account that documents black bear sightings in the South Lake Tahoe region, the now fully grown bear can be seen wading into a sun-dappled creek and toying with what looks like a teddy bear garden ornament.

"No idea where that bear bath toy came from, maybe he poached it from a nearby apartment complex," the account wrote.

The bear is seemingly identifiable as Tamarack by the darkened burn scars on his toes, though we are unable to verify the identity of the animal. Those burns came from the severe injuries the cub got at only six months old when he was caught in the Tamarack Fire in Markleville in June 2021. 

Tamarack the bear cub was badly burned in the Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe.

The injured cub was found in a yard by residents returning to their evacuated Markleville home after the 68,000-acre blaze subsided. Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care took the cub in, treated his burned paws with pain medicine and honey, bandaged him, fed him and brought him back to health.

Only days later, little Tamarack was reenergized enough to outwit his carers and escape captivity, still in bandages. 

His whereabouts were unknown — until now, it seems. As Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care told SFGATE last summer when Tamarack escaped the fire, "Somewhere, somebody was watching out for this bear.” 

See the bear living his best life below:

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SFGATE Editor-at-large Andrew Chamings is a British writer in San Francisco. He was formerly Senior Editor at The Bold Italic. He has written for The Atlantic, Vice, SF Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney's, Drowned in Sound and many other places.