Mummified dog is big attraction at Waycross forest museum

WAYCROSS - People flock to the history and science museum in Waycross not to see paintings by Rembrandt or Picasso, and not to see ancient Egyptian mummies. <br> <br> Instead, people come to Southern Forest World to see a mummified four-year-old coon hound, carefully preserved by the resin of a chestnut oak. <br> <br> Holly Beasley is executive director of the small private nonprofit museum that has exhibited the mummified hound inside the hollow tree that became its tomb. <br> <br> The once brown and white dog was found in the early 1980s by loggers cutting a stand of timber near the Cleburne-Haralson County line between Georgia and Alabama. <br> <br> The dog and its tree tomb was donated to the museum, where officials researched its story. <br> <br> According to Beasley, the dog went hunting with its master in the 1960s when he ran off and chased a squirrel or raccoon up into a hallow tree. The dog got stuck and was wedged so tight that it couldn&#39;t move up or down. The dog died about 20 feet off the ground and a few feet shy of an exit hole. <br> <br> Beasley said when the dog died, the environmental conditions inside the oak preserved its body. <br> <br> The museum gets only about one-thousand visitors a year. They&#39;re hoping news of the mummified dog will attract more guests. <br> <br> In the meantime, museum officials are asking the public for help in naming the dog. <br> <br> The winner gets a Southern Forest World T-shirt and a one-year family membership to the museum. The contest runs through October first.