Trompe-l’œil

But they’re much funnier in Texas than those lame-ass Nova Scotians. The hilarious thing to do in Texas is stick a decal on the tailgate of your pickup that makes it look as if there’s a woman tied up in the back of the truck.

Geddit? Killer funny, right?

At a glance, the decal is extremely convincing and acts as an optical illusion to make someone think there is an actual woman tied up in the bed of a truck.

But a closer look reveals that the optical illusion is simply a decal, and there is no woman in distress.

The decal is the handy work of Hornet Signs, a marketing and advertising company in Waco.

According to Brad Kolb, the owner of the company, the sticker was put on an employee’s truck to gauge how realistic their decals are.

Well of course. And they couldn’t have made it a decal of bags of groceries, or a rocking chair, or bales of hay. No, for purely technical reasons, none of those would have gotten as much attention.