PROVINCETOWN, Mass. (AP) — The biggest sensation on Cape Cod right now isn’t the lobster, the historic lighthouses or its rolling sand dunes. It’s not even a Kennedy.

It’s a bear.

A bruin believed to have swum about 500 feet across the Cape Cod Canal from the mainland on Memorial Day weekend has captured the imagination of residents as it traipses across the peninsula. Officials say research dating to the 1700s suggests this is the first bear on the Cape.

Boston area newscasts are featuring daily updates on the bear’s whereabouts and a Cape Cod Bear Twitter feed has nearly 1,300 followers.

“Well, my goodness. How often do you see a bear on Cape Cod?” said Marion Larson, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. “It’s really cool and people are really excited about it.”

A Cape Cod Times reporter told the paper she spotted the bear around 6 a.m. Thursday and said it bounded across the road like a puppy.

The bear, likely a male about 3 years old, has been seen near a chicken coop, a cranberry bog, a golf course and more than a dozen other locations along a 60-mile stretch of the Cape from Sandwich east to Provincetown.

Now that the bear has reached the tip of the Cape, wildlife officials say they may attempt to immobilize and move it to an area where other bears live. Bears don’t generally turn around and go back where they came from, and he can’t go any farther east.

“He’s at the end of the line, as far as real estate,” Larson said.