Mary settled down with a coffee and a digestive in her old armchair to watch the birds on her feeder. The variety of little visitors she saw through her window was the envy of her circle of friends. She regularly purchased bird food from the local garden centre. It was expensive, but she didn’t care; the birds depended on her.
As she dunked her digestive, she watched them establish the morning’s pecking order, the various tits having to wait until the playground bully, a single Robin, had finished feeding. Sipping her coffee in the warm sunshine, Mary opened her smartphone to check the headlines and read the latest about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. A grey squirrel paused to watch the feeding birds as he ran along the fence. Unseen by Mary, he rerouted, and, scattering the birds, quickly gained a purchase on their feeder. When Mary eventually looked up from her phone, their eyes met, and then it began…
Putting down her paper, Mary banged hard on the window. The squirrel paused impudently before retreating back to the fence “Those nuts are for the birds,” she shouted as she sat down again. The squirrel’s little brain, which had evolved over thousands of years, processed the situation with the speed of a supercomputer and decided to wait. Mary went back to the news. Eventually, the birds began to fly back to the feeder. For the squirrel, they were like a miner’s canary, so when they returned, he quickly followed. Frustrated, Mary pulled on her gardening shoes and went out to chase him off. He was back before she’d returned to her armchair. Her morning had been ruined.
Mary started buying other feeders, each more complicated than the last. The little squirrel’s supercomputer had an answer for them all. The birds now shunned her feeder, and she had to listen as her friends discussed the variety of feathered visitors in their gardens. How could that tiny brain outwit her? Mary’s husband had been checking the house- hold bills. “Whatever have you been buying at the garden centre?" he inquired. She agreed to cut back. Mary had just read how the US Congress was questioning more funding for Ukraine. The parallel was obvious, and she named the squirrel "Putin.”
Mary’s teenaged son David became amused by ‘Putin the squirrel’ and designed a solution. He stretched a wire from tree to house, with the birdfeeder hanging near the house. He then hung another feeder on a length of stretchy elastic attached to the same wire but nearer to the tree. The squirrel now chose the feeder nearest the tree, but each time he climbed onto it, the elastic stretched under his weight, causing him to scramble back up. Somehow he never thought to go on to the next feeder; his supercomputer remained in a programming loop. The little birds happily returned to their feeder, ignoring the action on the other feeder.
However, another pair of eyes began to watch. Next-door’s tabby had stationed herself underneath. Her brain had also made some calculations.