Please feed dog

Avert your eyes if depictions of grim death disturb you. Look away if images of loneliness, pain and despair offend your delicate sensibilities. The following is the paradigmatic face of suffering.

Or maybe it's a perverse hoax. I really can't tell you. I can affirm that the dog shown here is as dead as anything I have seen. I can vow that the sign next to him is completely genuine and that the photos are untouched. Beyond that, you're on your own.

We came upon the dog while driving out of the expanse of Area 51 in the Nevada desert. It lay beneath a stop sign just before the highway leading away from the compound. The corpse was lashed to the signpost with a coil of wire. Tufts of fur clung to the bleached bones and the dead beast smiled that rictus smile of death.

The circumstances in display the photos tell an unsettling story. A small, domestic animal bound to a pole on a very short leash, left alone under baking, desert sun and exposed to frigid desert nights. How long the animal could have survived like that is anybody's guess. You can only trust that it was a miserable, painful and horrifying crawl to the end. You can almost hear the agonized beast's frantic whimpers floating across the desert.
Or maybe the pooch was hit by a car on Route 375 and left beside the road. Some yucksters may have discovered the corpse weeks later while taking a leak during a drunken ride through the desert. This wits could have created the sign with a magic marker and assembled the grim scene in seconds. You can see this group wetting their pants in merriment as they envision the horror on faces of tourists.

Too close to call, I'd say. I'll leave it up to you. The PLEASE FEED DOG spectacle of March, 2005. Authentic horror? Or grisly stunt?