Human-Animal Harmony

This is the picture of an indian boy feeding a canadian elk a lollipop. I found it on the internet and saved it for my perusal and now I'm re-posting it to our world's wide web. A reddish-brown elk in yellow grass leaning towards a remarkably smaller mammal- a human toddler. The file name says this child is an Indian.

I've inferred several things one of them is this, tell me what you think: The elk leans towards the child because he's scared of humans, yet he loves lollipops. Lollipops are actually a technological confection that couldn't have come about without trade, sugar plantations, production lines, fossil fuels/ petroleum products (to color the lollipop, but maybe the elk doesn't care about the colors) and trucks/ boats. This elk is dependant on humans if he wants to get a lollipop. His clunky hooves and huge bulky body would never do the trick. And human slavery in the plantations and production lines is so far-fetched from his rugged natural habitat. Is the elk even a "he"? Tell me what you think...

Do I sound naive when I ask- is this picture truth or fiction? Was it drawn from a photograph? It was done from a photo that is obvious to me- but did this actually happen, or was it 2 photos - one of an elk, one of a child - that were merged in the painting to create what had previously only existed in the artist's elaborate imagination. Tell me. I'm dying to know...