SANDPOINT — No, the “Angry Bird” statue at the corner of Fourth and Church wasn’t vandalized.

It turns out Mother Nature is to blame for the colorful artwork’s demise sometime between Monday evening and early Tuesday morning.

Passersby were surprised to find the statue in pieces on the ground and feared miscreants had vandalized the sculpture by Sandpoint artist George Rickert of Sandpoint, titled “Angry Bird. The scultpure, installed in late August 2019, was part of the city of Sandpoint’s Silver Box Project — an annually rotating art-on-loan program featuring artwork in public spaces around the city.

Sandpoint Police Chief Corey Coon confirmed weather was to blame and not vandalism, sharing a video post by Rickert about previous damage suffered by the artwork due to the weather. Coon said the artist advised the city a week ago that sculpture had suffered weather-related damage for a second time, and appeared to be fracturing in the same areas where it has broken before.

In his video post on July 21, Rickert said the sculpture, which was made out of a single locust log that had been hanging around his shop for 30 or so years, had suffered “some serious damage over the winter.”

The sculpture was starting to show cracks in the same areas where it had been repaired.

“As a way of explanation, this sculpture is made out of one log,” Rickert said. “It’s a locust log and it had been in my shop for 30 years and I had thought the wood was dry and it wasn’t dry because the moisture content in my shop is pretty high and I had totally spaced that out.”

After the scultpure was finished and painted “in many, many coats of paint,” it shrank.

“When it was out here in the sun, it shrank. And when it shrank, it opened up some cracks and the cracks let moisture in and then, of course, we live in North Idaho, with wild extremes of weather,” Rickert said.

When he checked on the sculpture on July 21, Rickert said it was in rough shape and had “suffered some pretty severe damage.” He reached out to the city and offered to remove it, saying its current condition was not reflective of the work.

“If you get close, you’ll see there’s some pretty big damage,” Rickert said, panning the camera on his phone to both sides of the sculpture, showing deep cracks and fissures. “You can see it’s opened up quite a bit.”

However, before he could take it down, “Angry Bird” decided to come down on its own.

Caroline Lobsinger can be reached by email at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @CarolDailyBee.