You can file this one under strange but true.
A post shared on Facebook features three images showing the cross-section of a tree trunk. Inside the trunk is a dog’s head with its teeth showing.
“Speaking of crazy things…this mummified hound dog was found INSIDE a tree 28′ off the ground in Georgia,” reads the post’s caption. “Scientists believe it happened about fifty to a hundred years ago….it chased a raccoon or squirrel into the tree, climbed up inside, and got stuck.”
The post has been shared more than 80,000 times since it was posted Aug. 6. Other recent versions of the post have also accrued thousands of shares.
Some social media users expressed skepticism about the image’s authenticity.
“Cool but I honestly think bugs would have scavenged the remains,” one person commented.
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“Don’t believe it….,” wrote another.
The claim may seem hollow, but it’s accurate. The image in the posts shows a dog on display at Southern Forest World, a forestry museum in Waycross, Georgia.
USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the image for comment.
The dog in the image is known as “Stuckie.” He was discovered by loggers from Georgia Kraft Corp., according to Southern Forest World’s website.
A description next to Stuckie’s exhibit at the museum says contractors found the hound dog in 1980 as they were cutting a chestnut oak tree into seven-foot logs. Stuckie was four years old when he got stuck, probably while chasing an animal, museum Director Bertha Dixon told Newsweek in 2018.
And Stuckie was indeed found about 28 feet up the tree, as the Facebook post asserts, Dixon told USA TODAY.
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Stuckie had been inside the tree for about 20 years when he was found, according to the museum’s exhibit. His body was preserved naturally.
“A chimney effect occurred in the hollow tree, resulting in an upward draft of air,” the exhibit’s description reads. “This caused the scent of the dead animal to be carried away, which otherwise would have attracted insects and other organisms that feed on animals.”
Talking to Newsweek in 2018, Kristina Killgrove, a former assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, expanded on the favorable conditions that allowed the body to remain almost untouched.
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Killgrove said chestnut oaks contain tannin, a natural desiccant, a type of drying agent. The low moisture stopped microbial activity that would have allowed the decay of Stuckie’s remains.
Based on our research, we rate TRUE the claim that an image shows a mummified hound dog inside a tree. The dog was discovered by loggers in 1980. It’s on display at a forestry museum in Georgia.
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