COEUR d'ALENE - Broken, stolen, returned now standing, wings outstretched, surveying its kingdom.

The Great Blue Heron is back.

It was quite a trip - with a lot of unknown between missing and returned - but it's over and done with now.

To be sure it doesn't fly away again, it has been given thicker legs.

"I hope now that we tell them that they're bigger, they won't consider it a challenge," said Joe Sharnetsky, the arts commission member who started the ArtCurrents collection to which the $3,000 statue bird belonged.

'They' is the thief or thieves, and the challenge would be snapping the now 1-inch rebar legs. Late at night Oct. 20, the then half-inch legs were snapped by vandals, and the bird, a public art piece, disappeared.

The heartless (or drunken) deed broke the heart of the Olympia Restaurant owners, who pleaded with signs for the bird's return. The bird had stood just outside the Greek eating spot, and the kingdom it surveyed had been Lakeside Avenue.

Police said they were too swamped to look into it. Media ran with the lead-less crime. Then, in the late night hours of Nov. 5, or the wee ones of Nov. 6, the statue was returned to its old perch, laying bellyup in the morning drizzle when the restaurant owners showed up for work.

They were thrilled. They thanked the thieves or those who returned it or both with a sign.

The guilt-ridden or sober thieves were never caught, and police were still too busy to start the investigation, the department said.

But on Wednesday, the statue was reinstalled - welded in place.

The next news its creator Rick Davis, who also created the highly-publicized Ganesha piece, wants to hear about his art is of a sale.

He said he was happy to see it go up.

Everything is back to normal.