Walking the slug

My eldest son happened to spot this thing in one of Stockholm's southern suburbs.

What is this? A tree taking its armadillo-dog for a walk? Or is it a giant slug? Anyway, I though it could be fun scene to model.

The first thing I did was to do the orange creature itself. I made it from modelling clay, and it turned out like this.

Next I had a look around in Google Street View since I wanted to learn a little more about the closest surroundings. Here is an example screen shot.

Note that the protective fence around the tree closest to the "slug" is missing in the first (most recent) shot. Apparently it has been removed since it was doing no good anyway.

I also used Google to try to understand the back story. These are different photos of the same location but from different dates. The first photo is from 2011. It shows that the tree was surrounded by a protective fence.
 
The second one is from 2017. By then the fence has been knocked over, probably hit by a car, and the tree is supported by a rope fastened in the fence. I assume the "slug" has been placed in front of the tree to protect it from being hit again. Kind of innovative to paint it in that colour. I like that.
 
The last photo, taken by my son in 2018, shows that the fence is gone and the tree is instead supported by a rope tied to the "slug". I wonder if  it is a local resident who has taken pity of the tree, or if this is really the cities official way of dealing with the situation?

With the help of the photos I then started on the diorama itself.

I have also made a 3D model of the iron tree grate, which I have on order for printing. The grate is made up of 4 identical parts. The part is rendered like this.

That is the status as of today. Please stay tuned 😃