How to remove extra spaces in od output when reading from /dev/random

I'm making a script to auto-generate a url with a random number at a specific location. This will be for calling a JSON API for a random endpoint. The end goal is to generate something like this:

curl -s http://ift.tt/18o5bBD | jq '.'

where <RAND_INT> is a randomly-generated number. I can create this random number with the following command:

$ od -An -N2 -i /dev/random
          126

I do not know why the 10 extra spaces are in the output. When I chain the above commands together to generate the URL, I get this:

$ echo http://ift.tt/18o5bBF -An -N2 -i /dev/random`.json                                                                                   
http://ift.tt/1ETVUP0 43250.json

As you see, there is a single extra space in the generated URL. How do I avoid this?

I've also tried subshelling the rand_int command $(od -An -N2 -i /dev/random) but that produces the same thing. I've thought about piping the commands together, but I don't know how to capture the output of the rand_int command in a variable to be used in the URL.