Loosecanon wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
...
Anne Chambers wrote:
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
The beggars got another 6 last night so I pulled the oranges, tangelos and
mandarins. We will see if they eat cumquats or lemons.

David

I doubt they'll touch those but you never know. Lemons I have seen hollowed
out have been on the ground. I have a friend in the philippines they tell me
they use a banana by removing half the bit you eat and filling it with a one
shot rat poison. Others here have nailed poison wax blocks onto their trees.

Two types of rats in Aus the water or black rat which burrows and the
arboreal (tree) or roof rat. Roof rats are more common where I am they love
cotton palms, date palms and trees they can hide in and they also love roof
spaces which are warm and protected. They will eat snails and flowers as
well.


The roof rats also lurrrrve dioxin soaked bread