Igor M. Bunin, director of the Center for Political Technologies, a research organization here, described Mr. Putin's approach to dissent as "the heavy paw of the lion that can destroy anything".
It's an all-steel green hopper accessible to all birds but not to squirrels: when a heavy paw hits one of the two spring-weighted perches, a shield drops down, shutting off the seed supply.
But they are all audacious in ways that would disappear from movies until the 1960's, when the heavy paw of censorship retreated before another wave of youthful rebellion and women's liberation, with many of the same freedoms at stake.
The same could have been said of her father, who performed for years alongside his beloved companion Jasper, a massive male bear that could have resolved any creative difference with a heavy paw.
Now, four months later, the neighborhood of low-slung brick homes is largely deserted, a ghostly column of empty driveways and darkened windows, the silence broken only by the groan of heavy machinery pawing at the ground as remediation continues.
Here the threat of a heavy, murderous paw is replaced by the spectacularly unyielding nature of an 80ft Douglas fir, but the game is the same: the brotherhood of the ride, the skill, the danger.
