Wild Boar!!!!!

I was cutting heather and wanted something to do with it..... Obviously what was needed was a wild boar!

I chose a small clearing that was a little way from a path and which would give little tantalising views of the boar.

....or skeleton was constructed by cutting up bits of freshly cut chestnut in the region of 50mm to 75mm diameter for legs and spine, these were pushed into holes spiked into the ground to make a nice stable base they were screwed together in a sort of piggy shape :) the last picture shows some tusks, these were whittled up from a bit of Ash tree.

The eyes are a pair of 35mm film pots.... something that many of you may not have come across

The ears are a pair of thin slivers of thick oak bark cut to shape all of these are screwed in place.

The bulking out of the structure was undertaken with galvanised chicken mesh cut and bent into a body like shape, all the bits are stapled to the woodwork and odd ends are twisted together. A start was made on inserting sprigs of heather into the holes in the wire mesh, making sure they all flow in the same direction, pointy end of sprig points to the head end.

I then could not resist the fiddly job of fleshing out the head, this was done with lots of small sprigs of heather threaded into place and trimmed with scissors,

The rest of the body and the legs were gradually covered in a thick layer of heather and then trimmed up with shears and scissors.... The tail has a tassel of heather on the end, since taking the pictures I have bulked it out a bit more as it seemed a bit skimpy.

So there Boris stands, surprising those who come across him.