TravelWorld International Magazine Summer 2024

Pearl the Squirrel gets
photographed 30-100
times a day!
Photo by Vanessa Orr
And here's one more!
The Pig:
This giant pink pig once stood at Frank’s Hog Stand in
San Antonio before mysteriously disappearing for years.
Photo by Terri Marshall
The Bigger the Better
Texas isn’t only known for its large cowboy boots. There
are an awful lot of oversized roadside animals to be seen,
including a giant pink pig that used to be located at
Frank’s Hog Stand in San Antonio before mysteriously
disappearing. In the early 1990s, it showed up outside of
the city in an empty lot with someone living in it, and today
it stands proudly as “possibly the last surviving porcine
programmatic architecture” in the country. Whatever the
hell that means.
Pearl the Squirrel, or what Vanessa believes is the Holy Grail
of roadside animal art, stands in Cedar Creek, TX, where
you can not only buy souvenirs but pecans—24 hours a day.
Smitty of Smithville:
This 20-foot sculpture memorializes the
world’s largest gingerbread man, created
in Smithville, TX. Photo by Terri Marshall
TERRI:
Look, a pecan vending machine.
Outside a pecan store.
Guarded by a massive squirrel.
Do I deliver on the weird or what?
VANESSA:
Like a champ. But who needs
access to pecans 24 hours a day?
TERRI:
Who needs to drive miles out of
the way to see a giant squirrel?
Pearl the Squirrel stands 14
feet tall and is reportedly
photographed 30 to
100 times a day. She’s so
popular that she even has
her own photo gallery
website.
The Hill Country is
also home to Smitty, a
20-foot-tall sculpture that
memorializes the world’s
largest gingerbread man,
created in Smithville, TX.
The 1,308 pounds, 8 oz.
cookie took 750 pounds
of flour, 49 gallons of
molasses, and 72 dozen
eggs to make—and left
behind a legacy, as well as,
we assume, a lot of local
stomachaches.
VANESSA: ‘Nuff said.
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