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"Mummified Coon Dog"









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 dog 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.

Southern Forest World, a non-profit museum devoted to the timber industry, at 1440 N. Augusta Ave. in Waycross, is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Call (912) 285-4056.



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