Call it the Zero Road Mystery: Why would anyone steal a cowboy boot?

Particularly this cowboy boot: It's 8 feet tall, weighs about 150 pounds and is brightly painted with pictures of rodeo clowns.

When Dr. Leslie Madden went to bed on Friday night it was there in her front yard at 8016 Zero Road west of Casper, where the sculpture has been since she bought the unique artwork in October at a Cheyenne Frontier Days fund-raiser.

The hollow sculpture, which is made of fiberglass, was bolted to a rectangular box made of railroad ties. She often shines two spotlights on the piece, but she didn't turn them on that night.

When she backed her car out of the driveway Saturday morning, unbelievably, the boot was gone.

"I'm just devastated," said Madden, principal of Willard Elementary School.

Recalling how difficult a task it was to haul the boot in a horse trailer to her house from Cheyenne, Madden figures it must have taken three or four people to steal it.

The Natrona County Sheriff's office is investigating the theft. Madden said deputies found boot prints - the human-size kind - and tire tracks at the scene.

"It was bolted down so well, including steel braces inside the boot," she recalled. "I thought it was secure."

The three Casper artists who created "Clownin' Around" for the Frontier Days competition last year - Holly Bishop, Michele McDonald and Debbie Witte - were also disheartened to learn of Madden's loss.

McDonald said it took them a couple of months to complete the boot.

"That's what makes me so mad," she said. "All that work and somebody probably threw it in the back of a truck and dinged it all up."

All of the participants who entered the competition started with the same fiberglass mold of the boot that was made at a Midwestern factory. The rules required them to artistically tell a story about someone who wore a boot.

"We wanted something colorful, because all three of us use a lot of color in our work," Bishop related. "We thought rodeo clowns would be perfect."

But it wasn't easy. First they had to find a place it would fit, which turned out to be Witte's garage. Painting a checkerboard pattern on the heel required Witte to lay on the floor; Bishop and McDonald took turns on the ladder to reach the top of the boot with their acrylic paint.

"We couldn't move it," Bishop said. "It took three of us to scoot it around."

Which leaves the artists baffled about how the boot could be scooped up and taken away in the middle of the night.

Madden, who said she paid "thousands of dollars" for the sculpture, wonders what the thieves have planned for it.

"They would have to have a big garage to hide it," she said. "And if anyone tries to display it in Natrona County, someone is going to recognize it."

Madden said since she bought her house in 1998 she'd been looking for something to showcase in the railroad tie box, which used to have a wagon in it and came with the property. When she saw "Clownin' Around" at Frontier Days, she knew she had to buy it.

"I fell in love with it," she said. "It was just a classic."

The principal brought Willard students who successfully completed a reading program to her home to celebrate, and Madden said the kids really enjoyed the yellow-and-red polka-dotted boots with clowns all over them.

Madden said her neighbors on Zero Road were as sad as she was to learn about the boot's sudden disappearance.

"They all love the boot," she said. "It was just a special thing for all of us."

Anyone with information about the theft is encouraged to call the Natrona County Sheriff's Office at 235-9282.

Assistant Managing Editor Kerry Drake can be reached at (307) 266-0582 or kerry.drake@casperstartribune.net.