"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
...
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






Rats can bore out the round holes. They have done it to my pomegranates.
They did it also to my neighbours Oranges, also grapefruit 3 houses away and
i have seen guavas with the same damage.