Squirrels, it turns out, can stalk and carry out highway robbery: Who precisely is the nut in these cases?

Rodents are generally not to be trusted, but it must be said that squirrels, hamsters and gophers had a rather genial image, unlike other rodents. However, it would seem that at least squirrels are on a downward spiral nowadays, given that a German one was recently arrested for stalking — that too a human — after she complained to the police that it had been following her relentlessly. While clearly the police were unable to ascertain the ostensible reason for the squirrel’s unseemly interest in her, it may well be that the animal was ravenous and realised that she was a nut. An irresistibly large one at that.

Just last week, police in a Michigan town issued a lookout notice complete with a mugshot of a squirrel who they think is the prime suspect in the recent theft in June of 28,000 pounds of walnuts worth $128,000. So, clearly, the species’ cunningly criminal intent across genres is coming to the fore. How the bushy-tailed American rodent managed to squirrel away an entire truckload of nuts is quite mystifying, but the authorities no doubt have reasonable grounds to suspect that it succumbed to temptation seeing the sheer size of the nut cache. Indeed, its German cousin may have been motivated by the same desire this week, although the species of nuts was different.