The past week has been positively tumescent with statue news. The first big item to come springing forward was the discovery (and subsequent removal) of a weird metal monolith that had been erected in the Utah desert. Then, as if our hands weren’t already full dealing with the story of that mysterious unit, another monolith was found bulging from the ground in Romania. Now, incredibly, we have another package from the world of outdoor statues to unwrap: The case of the missing German penis monument.
The Guardian reports that a 7-foot tall, 440 pound statue—a big, literal woody—had appeared on on southern Bavaria’s Grünten mountain years ago with no explanation, gaining enough notoriety that it’s inspired a local beer and “celebrity status in recent years as a destination for hikers.” It’s remained firmly, proudly upright for most of its history, but was reported on Monday to have been neutered so efficiently that “only a pile of sawdust” remains. In the past, the statue’s been knocked over and restored, but this time it seems to have vanished completely.
“Police in the Bavarian town of Kempten are investigating the disappearance,” the article states, “although it wasn’t clear whether a crime has been committed.” It doesn’t help the case that nobody knows who built or placed the giant hog up in the mountains in the first place. The Guardian describes the “local lore” that says “it was made as a prank birthday present for a young man whose family didn’t appreciate the gift,” and was brought up the mountain as a result. If this is the case, maybe that young man has returned to reclaim his gift, riding it down the mountainside like a sled so he can use it as an oversized hat rack in his home. Or maybe the statue has just shrunk back into the mountain with the arrival of cold weather, leaving only a sad dribble of sawdust as a sign of its winter retreat.
Read more about Germany’s top mystery over here.
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