David Hare-Scott wrote:
I have ripe oranges on the tree. Something is stealing and eating them.
Four fruit have been taken off the tree and left a few metres away. Each
has a neat round hole cut in the side about 5cm across, the small bits
of skin were left scattered about. The predator has then neatly eaten
all the flesh of the orange leaving an empty skin with a hole in it. No
bird or animal has been sighted nearby. There are no identifiable bite
marks anywhere to give away the culprit.

The bats have left for warmer latitudes and in any case they cannot eat
on the ground.

A mouse couldn't move the whole fruit and wouldn't need a hole that big.

There are no stray gouges from teeth marks that rats so often leave when
they eat something sizeable so if it is a rat it is the neatest one ever
seen who was very focussed on getting to the flesh while chewing the
least amount of skin.

Rabbits would go for all manner of other things in the garden before
oranges and there are no droppings.

I am thinking it is a possum.

Any views?

David

Possum - they have got all my grapefruit, the b+++++s got most of the plums and apples too
--
Anne Chambers
South Australia

anne dot chambers at bigpond dot com