Ms. Pearl the Giant Squirrel

A fourteen foot squirrel stands beside Highway 71 at Cedar Creek holding a pecan, and she is there for an entirely straightforward commercial reason. The Berdoll family grew pecans and made pies, and needed drivers on a fast highway to actually stop rather than register the sign and keep going. The proposal, as the family tells it, was that people could not drive past a giant squirrel. They were right. Ms. Pearl is now the best known roadside figure between Bastrop and Austin, is described as the largest squirrel statue in the world, and has a steady queue of people photographing each other beneath her at most hours of the day. There is no admission, no gate and no fixed hours for the squirrel herself, which is part of why she works so well. A few feet away stands the other reason people pull in: a vending machine that dispenses whole pecan pies, twenty four hours a day. It was installed in 2008 because demand kept arriving outside shop hours, and it is believed to be the only pecan pie vending machine in the country. It takes cards, it is restocked daily, and it does genuine business at two in the morning. The shop behind sells candies, pralines and shelled pecans from the family's own orchards along the Colorado River bottom. Jennifer and Jared Wammack bought the business from her parents, Hal and Lisa Berdoll, in 2008, which was also the year the squirrel and the vending machine arrived.