Rhapsodies

Today the Inktober Tupperware gave me the poser of doing a little know creature from Aztec folklore the Ahuizotl, a monster that I had first heard of from an episode of My Little Pony.

I’d been curious enough to look it up later on, finding the basic articles, Aztec sculpture and some very nice illustrations on Deviantart but nothing I’d call extensive research and unfortunately due to my rules for this exercise I had no choice but to work from the memory of what I’d looked at in passing.

For the most part I found myself drawn to the cryptozoological approach treating it as just another animal no scarier than a jaguar (yes I know I’d be singing a different tune if I found myself lost in a Mexican jungle.) If I had more time on this I think I would have gone more with having it being some sort of monster opossum rather than the catlike thing I did here because of it’s unique grasping tail (which leads to some wonderful questions about hypothetical large extinct marsupials that could have inspired these myths in the first place.)