I did this six inch relief a few months ago. It’s a flying squirrel although not everyone recognizes it as one without the arm membranes and feathery tail showing. I used Genesis paints to bring out the detail and subtle variations in color. I don’t usually use paint this much but I like how it came out.
I didn’t really know what a flying squirrel really looked like either until we had them living in our attic. One day we were up in the studio and we heard the feet running back and forth over the ceiling. “Oh no! What’s that?” It sounded too big to be mice so we were fearing the worst. My brother was actually visiting at the time and volunteered to go up and check it out. He caught a quick glimpse of one of them, “Well, it’s not a rat but I’m not sure what it is.” Some more scrambling noises came from above as he chased it around. “I think you have flying squirrels,” he reported. But there was no way he was going to catch those quick, agile critters by hand.
We called the town Animal Control officer to see if they had a Have a Heart trap or any suggestions. They sent someone out who nervously declined to climb into the attic to look at our vicious squirrels, but he did leave a trap off which was big enough to catch a raccoon. We went out and bought our own.
We knew we had a couple squirrels at least but we ended up catching four of them one by one in the trap baited with peanut butter and sunflower seeds. They are the cutest things with their enormous eyes, like something out of the rainforest. They were so scared when we caught them but happy to be released. The fifth squirrel refused to go into the trap. It actually climbed down through the walls of the house until it got to the basement. It was so tired and worn out at that point that my husband caught it with work gloves and just carried it outside. Once it got outside, it simply glided from his waist height hands, landing about 25 feet away.