Beware of Dog

I spotted this sign on a junkyard on the West Side. It’s so much more effective than the usual “Beware of Dog,” don’t you think?

First, it doesn’t even use the word “dog,” which has positive connotations: man’s best friend, and so on. It shows a picture of a vicious beast with fangs. It addresses you in the voice of that beast, which is startling, and it grabs the reader’s attention with a question, and the word “you.”

But most important, it sets a scene and tells a little story. It invites you to imagine yourself inside the junkyard around dusk. You hear a low growl and this thing emerges from behind a heap of auto parts. It can make it to the fence in three seconds. Can you?