It was sliced, diced, de-hooved and removed, but Moo@NU is coming back to Norris University Center.

An Evanston artist has almost completed an identical replacement for the 50-pound fiberglass cow that was stolen from outside Norris in May. The cow was later found dismembered in a fraternity house.

Retired graphic artist Harold Burns, who created the original cow, was commissioned to build a new bovine creation.

“I liked what I did, and I’d like to see it exist (again),” Burns said. “It was a sad reality when it was destroyed.”

The cow’s design plays with the idea of a “bull’s eye,” with multicolored concentric circles painted around the cow’s eye to create a target.

The Norris Advisory Board’s cow committee will meet March 9 to decide when the new Moo will debut, said Norris Director Bill Johnston.

Although Johnston said he was not sure what security measures would be taken to prevent another cow-napping, he was sure of one thing: “We’re not going to put it outside,” he said. “I’d like to put it back where it was, but it would be silly to do that.”

The original cow, inspired by the 1999 Cows on Parade exhibition in downtown Chicago, was stolen by two members of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity a few weeks after its dedication.

University Police found the cow’s head and udder shortly after the cow was cut off at the hooves from its 200-pound base, which was designed to be theft-proof.

The two students responsible for the theft were forced to pay for all costs connected to replacing the cow, including the artist’s commission and the fee of shipping the cow from Switzerland to Evanston.

The project’s cost was originally estimated at $14,000, but the final cost is still being assessed, Johnston said.

“(The students) were told they had to make the entire thing whole, meaning the reception and all other kinds of publicity,” he said. “They saw fit to destroy something, and they needed to make restitution.”

Burns said it wasn’t easy to recreate the original.

“It was difficult the first time, but there was a kind of spontaneity,” he said. “It’s hard to repeat that.”

Johnston said the cow was an important symbol of the Northwestern and Chicago communities.

“I don’t think anybody would have felt the cow was a spectacular work of art,” he said. “(But) I think it’s important as a community of people who live together (to replace it).

“Plus, it was Northwestern’s cow.”