Germany's wire services on Tuesday morning remind us that Bruno the bad news bear is no ordinary brown bear: he's a luxury brown bear with a penchant for showing his ursine self in fashionable resorts. For nearly two weeks now, Bruno has eluded a team of Finnish bear hunting dogs as he makes his way from one Alpine resort village to another along the border between Germany and Austria. Over the weekend, he even stopped in front of a police station for a rest without getting caught before breaking into a rabbit cage and snacking on a bunny and guinea pig for his supper.

Following his sojourn in the resort city of Kochel am See over the weekend, Bruno showed up Monday in Kreuth am Tegernsee -- a lovely lakeside town in the Alpine foothills whose fresh mountain air is supposed to have therapeutic qualities. There, he killed two sheep and overturned a beehive. As he has been known to do, the bear didn't eat the sheep -- he just attacked and killed them as if it were some twisted game. The team of Finish bear-hunting experts  were able to pick up Bruno's scent, but they quickly lost it and the brown bear's whereabouts were unknown on Tuesday morning. The Bavarian Environment Ministry's representative for bear-related affairs , Manfred Wölfl, said late Monday that there was little hope that Bruno could be caught quickly.

Bavarian officials have temporarily suspended a shoot-to-kill order against Bruno, who they say has learned to associate humans with the presence of food. Five Finnish bear trappers accompanied by six bear-hunting dogs are working on a €25,000 contract to find the bear and capture him alive runs out on Saturday. If caught, officials say they will sedate Bruno and take him to an wildlife refuge -- where he will be given acres of a space and a comfortable life.

On Monday, the Bavarian Environment Ministry announced it would add resources to the hunt to capture Bruno including the 24-hour availability of a helicopter that can be dispatch to any location in the Bavarian Alps within 30 minutes.

But that's cold comfort for small Alpine farmers who have been living in fear of the bear. Kreuth am See resident Bertl Baudrexl woke up to a bloody mess on his lawn on Monday. Two sheep lay dead in the grass and Bruno injured three others. "It's terrible," said Baudrexl's wife Eugenie. "I hope they just finally catch that bear."

A spokesman for the Bavarian Environment Ministry has warned area residents that, cute as Bruno may be, he could also pose a threat to humans. "With each passing day, this bear gets even more audacious," Roland Eichorn told news agency AFP. In the beginning the bear would just attack animal stalls, "but now he's going for strolls on sidewalks" in the middle of town. He may look cuddly, "but a wild animal is a wild animal."