Residents of a town in central Mexico were stunned to see a dog running down the street with a human head in its mouth.
A video posted on social media showed the dog walking down a dark street, carrying her head by her neck, and apparently intending to lead her to a safe place to eat her.
Officials in the state of Zacatecas, which has seen high levels of violence, confirmed the incident and said Thursday that police eventually managed to remove the dog’s human head.
A police official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the head and other human remains had been left at an ATM in the town of Monte Escobedo on Wednesday night.
Along with the human remains was a message referring to a drug cartel. But a stray dog took the corpse’s head away before police could intervene.
Zacatecas has been the scene of a bloody and protracted turf war between local organizations backed by the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.
Drug cartels in Mexico often leave notes next to piles of dismembered human remains, in order to intimidate their rivals or the authorities.