"He's back!" Joni Goode exclaims to a neighbor. "He" is Gordon the gorilla, the 300-pound scrap-metal sculpture that was stolen from Goode's front yard last week.

james gregg / Arizona Daily Star

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A Monday morning jogger ran across a 300-pound gorilla that had been missing for about a week from its owner's Midtown front yard.

Bill Freeman, who lives near Reid Park, saw the scrap-metal primate sitting under a tree behind the park, perfectly positioned to watch a baseball game at ballfield No. 5, said Joni Goode, who owns the wayward sculpture.

Last week, Goode reported someone had stolen Gordon the gorilla, which had been a Christmas gift from her husband 12 years ago and ever since had sat in a place of honor in her front yard on North Justin Lane in the Frontier Village neighborhood.

Freeman tried unsuccessfully to reach the police, so he called local media to report his discovery so he could get ready for work, said his wife, Anne Coburn. Freeman could not be reached for comment.

"He came in (from his jog) and said he found the gorilla. I thought he was absolutely insane," she said.

She walked back to the park with him, arriving as Goode oversaw Gordon being loaded into Goode's pickup truck by Tucson Parks and Recreation employees.

"It was kind of a funky-looking thing. It looked heavy," Coburn said. "What a crazy thing for somebody to steal."

"He is perfectly unharmed," Goode said after retrieving her prized possession. "He was actually in a perfect position to watch a baseball game."

It took three "really big" men to lift the sculpture into Goode's truck, she said.

Freeman declined a reward when she offered it to him, Goode said.

Last week's media coverage of the theft was a fun diversion from her feelings of loss, she said. "Then I started getting mad. More sad than mad. Tucson is such an art community."

When she heard Gordon had been found, it became fun again, she said, and she even grabbed a leash for him on her way out of the house.

Goode said from now on Gordon will have a chain around one of his legs attached to her flower bed to help him stay in her yard.

"I'm sure we'll have a welcome-home party," she said.