VIDEO: Trampolining stoat re-enacts John Lewis Christmas advert

It is a case of life imitating art as wild creatures were filmed re-enacting the John Lewis advert Christmas advert.
The bouncing stoatThe bouncing stoat
The bouncing stoat

Wildlife artist Robert E Fuller filmed these secretive animals bouncing on a trampoline using CCTV surveillance cameras in his garden in Thixendale.

His film shows a wild stoat running on a child's trampoline before heading over to his vegetable patch late at night.

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The stoat then runs animatedly over the netting before flipping and jumping around, clearly enjoying the bounce.

Robert Fuller uses CCTV cameras to capture the wildlife action in his remote North Yorkshire garden.

He was surprised when he discovered the creatures making use of his garden furniture.

““I use video so that I can see how the muscles of an animal move so that I get that right in my paintings,” he explained. “One day I noticed tracks in a fresh fall of snow on the children’s trampoline so I trained a camera trap on the scene and it caught one of the stoats bouncing on the trampoline that night,” he said. “Shortly after that I discovered that these animals were also bouncing on the cabbage netting I had stretched over the vegetable patch.

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“They were clearly enjoying themselves. Jumping and even doing flips! I think they preferred the buoyancy of the cabbage netting to the trampoline.”

“I’m not sure whether the makers of the John Lewis realise that this can actually happen! But, of course, it is very difficult to capture animals at play like this in reality.”

This year’s John Lewis Christmas advert, which features CGI images of a badger, a fox and a hedgehog taking a turn on a child’s brand new trampoline on Christmas Eve, was a huge hit when it debuted on TV last week.

It seems the concept of wild creatures playing on the garden furniture is closer to the truth than the advertising film-makers might have realised.