"Melania" appeared on the banks of the River Sava in July 2020, four months before her human inspiration left the White House.

Now, four months after the erstwhile Melanija Knavs resumed residence at Washington's most famous address, her larger-than-life-size avatar has apparently made an undignified exit from her Slovenian hometown, Sevnica.

All that remains of the massive bronze statue are the feet ? and the two-metre-tall tree stump they were standing on.

The symmetry would probably appeal to the whimsical US director Wes Anderson ? who often features bizarre heists in his films. But even in his back catalogue, there has never been anything quite like the case of the cursed First Lady statue.

Because this is not the first time a Melania Trump tribute has met a sticky end in Sevnica.

The first iteration was unveiled in July 2019. Carved from a single piece of wood by a chainsaw-wielding local artisan called Ales "Maxi" Zupevc, it lasted a year before an unidentified perpetrator decided to turn it into a Fourth of July bonfire.

Luckily, US artist Brad Downey ? who commissioned Maxi to create the wooden original ? had already made a cast of the statue. It duly made a comeback in bronze, at the same site.

At its unveiling, Mr Downey said the new version had been designed to be "as solid as possible, out of a durable material which cannot be wantonly destroyed".

But, as it turns out, it can be chopped off at the ankles and taken away.

Local police say they are treating "Melania's" disappearance as "theft" and have launched an investigation.

The first iteration of the statue by local artist Ales "Maxi" Zupevc was set on fire

Brad Downey has always insisted that his work was political. He chose Maxi as a collaborator because his upbringing had been similar to that of the First Lady.

And he argued that Melania Trump benefitted from a fast-tracked US citizenship process, while other immigrants suffered under her husband's "xenophobic" policies.

Now he suspects the statue's disappearance "has something to do with Trump getting re-elected".

Meanwhile, in Sevnica, the local authorities have mixed feelings. They condemned "any form of interference with private or public property".

But, they added, "the image of the US First Lady was not something anyone was proud of". (BBC, but headline rejigged)

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