Thief Steals Ham-Sized Statue Of Abe Lincoln's Hand, For Some Reason

By Mae Rice in News on Jan 4, 2016 3:40PM

If you run into someone with one extra-large hand that weirdly reminds you of Abraham Lincoln, you may not be having a fever dream.

Today, in giant Illinois sculptures: Someone has stolen a massive plaster cast of the one-time president’s hand from Illinois’ Kankakee County Museum, according to none other than The New York Times.

Artist George Grey-Barnard’s sculpture has been missing since December 11 from Kankakee, a town about an hour south of Chicago, the Times reports.

In a Facebook post, the Kankakee police described the hand in question as follows:

This is valuable piece of Illinois/Kankakee history as Barnard was a Kankakee native. The artifact is well over 150 years old. The artifact was described by the museum curator to be approximately "The size of a 8-10 pound Ham".

The Times justified the story by citing Lincoln’s particularly iconic status in Illinois. His face graces our license plates, they note, and there’s a towering statue of Abe watching over Kankakee’s highway exit.

However, we do not need to justify it so elaborately. We just like wondering about what the thief is doing with the giant hand. Using it as a creepy doorstop? Hoping that, one day, it will give them its elusive giant thumbs up?

At the same time, we hope it gets returned. Connie Licon, the museum’s executive director, said of the theft: “We were devastated. It just brought us all to the floor. [...] We’re a small museum, and we just don’t acquire pieces like this.”

The theft may be a prank, or an attempt to pawn the artwork, which local police told the Times was worth roughly $5,000.