Rodentmobile

The Truly Nolen pest control company has a delightful car mascot: a Volkswagen Bug, tricked out to resemble a mouse with a tail and a pair of decidedly Mickey-esque ears. Thanks to our friend Ellen Bush in Lexington for the photo!

Football in the Sky

Put some lights on this thing and you could have a pretty convincing UFO at night. This peculiar football-mimetic hot air balloon went wafting over my apartment complex this morning.

Brown-Forman's Big Bourbon Bottle

One of America's best mimetic water towers is at the Brown-Forman plant on Dixie Highway in Louisville: it's fashioned to look like an enormous bottle of Old Forester bourbon, and can be clearly seen for miles around.

Purnell's Piggy Propane

On page 213 in your copy of Weird Kentucky, you'll find the grave of Fred Purnell, Kentucky's sausage king. His is the only gravestone I know of that depicts a package of sausage on it, and a smiling cartoon pig to boot. Purnell's sausage company is still thriving in Shelby County today, and in their front yard there's a huge propane tank mimetically painted to look like - yes - a package of Purnell's sausage!

Bondurant's Pharmacy

This drive-thru pharmacy, shaped like an enormous mortar and pestle, can be found at 1465 Village Drive in Lexington, KY.

(Do people even know what mortars and pestles are anymore? I doubt it.)

The people here are very proud of their unusual structure and are happy to tell visitors all about it. Believe it or not, this building dates back only to the 1970s, not the 30s-60s heyday of creative mimetic architecture.

You can see an aerial view on Google Maps here.

World's Largest Baseball Bat

Without a doubt, this is the world's largest baseball bat, which can be found at the Louisville Slugger Museum, 800 West Main Street, Louisville, KY. It's 120 feet tall and said to be modeled after Babe Ruth's bat. Someday in the future, after giant radioactive mutant cockroaches rule the Earth, their archeologists will find this and be utterly confused.