The Astoria dump was closed for about two hours Thursday afternoon after workers there found what they thought was a human foot. 

The Astoria Police Department responded to the scene, and after examination by experts, the foot was determined to not be human.

Dr. Joann Stefanelli, the county medical examiner, made the determination after looking at the foot, said Astoria Assistant Chief of Police Alan Oja. To be absolutely certain, she sent images from the scene to a Portland forensic anthropologist to examine.

The foot belong to a bear and because it was badly decomposed and found in the mud, its appearance was misleading to an untrained eye, Oja said.

Even Oja was fooled when he first saw it. “I thought, Oh man, that does look like a human foot,'” he said, recalling when he first saw it.

“They told us it’s most definitely not human, which is, frankly, all I care about,” said Laura Leebrick, government and community relations manager for Western Oregon Waste (WOW). “Nationwide you hear scary stories about body parts being buried in Dumpsters and you can’t help but be a little bit spooked.”

In her 12 years with WOW, she’s never had a situation like this come up.

“The guys at the station responded really well,” she said. “They found something that was obviously biological, obviously some kind of a body part and they did the right thing.”

An employee immediately contacted police, she said.