Dismembered body parts weren't human after all

So it looked for a while like we were going to have a story that was sure to end up on one of those forensic investigation shows: In the past few days, a dismembered foot and a couple of hands were found in northwest Harris County, and no one was sure who they belonged to. "How horrible," we thought, reaching for the phone to call Dayle Hinman. And then we found out the rest of the story: The severed hands and feet belonged to a bear, not a person.

Oh.

Turns out "some misleading information" from the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office led investigators to initially think a foot found in the 17700 block of House Hahl on Saturday was from a human, which prompted a search of the area Saturday night and all day Sunday. Nothing else was found until yesterday afternoon, when the foot turned up and deputies realized they were looking at pieces of a bear.

Unfortunately, the Chronicle didn't report any more information on how the medical examiner's office made deputies think they were dealing with human body parts — maybe decomposing bear parts look a lot like human parts? And though we're relieved to know there wasn't a dismembered human on the side of the road, we can't help but wonder what happened to that poor bear.