Giant Strawberry

Ponchatoula, Louisiana

Although Ponchatoula calls itself the Strawberry Capital of Louisiana, it's always been best known for its downtown alligator in a cage. That may start to change now that Ponchatoula displays a ten-foot-tall photo-op strawberry, unveiled across the street from city hall in April 2018 during the town's annual strawberry festival.

The big berry was the idea of the mayor's wife and a local restaurant owner, who saw a similar big strawberry in Germany, of all places (America has several of its own). The two women raised money from local businesses and hired Valek Sykes, a movie prop builder, to design it. It was Sykes who determined that for selfie-snapping camera phone tourists, ten feet was the optimum height for a giant strawberry.