Many
animals have been mummified, but few have a mummy tale as unique as the
hound dog of Waycross, Georgia.
He (or she--now there's no
way to tell) was a four-year-old hunting dog in the 1960s. Accompanying
its master on a hunt, it ran off to chase a squirrel or a raccoon. The
critter must have scrambled into a hollow chestnut oak tree, because the
bog did the same. Only the hound dog could not get out. It was wedged in
the tree so tightly that it couldn't move. It died.
Rather than decaying, the
dog became a natural mummy due to the conditions of its
"coffin." First, all scent of the dead dog went up the
inside of the tree like a chimney. Predators and insects never got wind of
the hound dog. Second, the dog's body was well protected (and
well-ventilated) in the hollow trunk. Finally, resins from the core of the
tree may have helped in the dog's preservation.
Sometime in the 1980s,
loggers were cutting trees in the forest. Without knowing it, they cut
down the dog's tree and placed it on a logging truck. Then they looked
inside and saw the mummified dog. Rather than send him to the sawmill, the
loggers donated the dog and its tree coffin to the Southern Forest World
Museum in Waycross.
