Wildlife - Ferret in the straw 

PAINTING CREATED BY THE ANIMAL ARTIST LAURENCE SAUNOIS

A ferret sleeps a lot. I wanted to represent him in the straw as one of his wild cousins might have done. He is quiet, serene. This painting took me hours and hours of work. The straw was made over several months. Each layer of paint had to be perfectly dry before a new one could be applied. It was done on canvas that had been painted with gesso. I wanted a smooth surface that would allow the oil to slide off. Between the drawing on the prepared surface and the finished work, it took a year. Each drying time allowed me to rethink the painting and see what changes I could make.

This small mustelid has been used for many centuries for hunting rats and rabbits. Very lively, it was introduced muzzled into burrows. The rabbits, frightened, fled, landing in cages or in the meshes of nets arranged at the exit of the galleries. On boats or in granaries, ferrets were used to hunt rats, vectors of many diseases. In the Middle Ages, the ferret became a pet. Then the "fashion" passed over the centuries. It is only in the 1980s that the ferret found the way home. Intensive breeding, which provided ferrets to research laboratories, found in this craze another way to exploit the animal. The ferret became a NAC (New Pet). Today, it comes in third place behind the cat and the dog. It has undergone all sorts of mutations to diversify the coat colors (albino, skunk, champagne, cinnamon, chocolate, black, roan ...).