A banjo-playing raccoon that disappeared from an art installation over the weekend has been returned.
Ricky the Raccoon went missing from Stockton Garden, in downtown Okotoks, a week before the Nooks & Crannies Festival, leaving local artist Jenny Dale Stables upset and with no choice but to rebuild the missing musician.
She rebuilt the raccoon but found out the original had been returned sometime in the early morning on July 17.
"At around 11:00 in the morning, I got a message from Tipper Records," Stables said.
"They said that they went and looked at the installment, and they saw that somebody had returned Ricky and put him back on his perch."
The raccoon is part of an automata art piece called the Rambling Recyclers, a four-piece band of animals that move when a crank is turned.
Stables said it took months of planning, trial and error to perfect the moving parts, and she had to do a few repairs to the piece after Ricky was returned.
According to a post on her Facebook page, Stables said she is thrilled that the original turned up.
"I am so happy that whoever took him had a change of heart," she wrote.
