NEW YORK (AP) – Bello Nock, the daredevil clown distraught this weekend over the loss of his trademark mini-bike used in his show, was smiling Sunday afternoon.

Bello heard that his shiny foot-high, 6-inch-wide contraption was recovered, and he was anxiously waiting to see the prized possession missing for nearly two days.

The star of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was reunited with the bike, and met the man who found it, at Madison Square Garden where the circus was performing.

“Thank you so much,” Bello said to Ricky Robinson, who said he found the bike Friday night outside a restaurant in Manhattan’s West Side. Robinson didn’t know how the bike got there.

“Give me a hug. I need my bike. That is my bike. Thank you, buddy,” the clown said.

In exchange for returning the bike, Robinson, 54, will receive a $1,000 reward, a new bicycle donated by Toys R Us, and free tickets to Knicks games and the circus show named for Bello, “Bellobration.”

The ordeal began Friday when Bello, his bike in tow, and two other clowns went to a Grand Central Terminal shoe repair shop to have their big show shoes cleaned.

They were headed back to the circus when a camera crew showed up outside Grand Central. The three clowns put on an impromptu show, doing handstands on the hood of a yellow cab, and Bello hopped on his bike. He then rested it against another bike tied to a street sign.

On the way back to the Garden, he realized he’d forgotten his prop. He went back and tried to find it, but it had disappeared.

Bello, a seventh-generation circus performer, was “very upset.” The bike, built by a man in Mexico, has been in the family for dozens of years. It took him six months to learn how to ride it.

Without the bike, the man once named “America’s Best Clown” by Time magazine would had to adjust his show.

A toll-free line was created. A reward was offered. A news conference called. All for the lost bitty bike.

After reading about the lost bike and seeing a picture of it in the Daily News, Robinson showed up at Madison Square Garden Sunday morning with the bike.

“I didn’t know what it was,” said Robinson, a native of Bridgeport, Conn., also P.T. Barnum’s hometown. “I didn’t know how anybody rides it.”

For Monday’s show, Bello again will be retrieving the bike from his yellow suitcase as part of a love story in which he pulls out all the stops to impress a woman.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to have it back,” he said. “I wonder how comfortable it would be as a pillow. I may have to sleep on the thing. I’m not letting it out of my sight.”