On Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:45:58 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
wrote:

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

The possums don't eat my lemons, but they do eat the leaves of the
lemon tree!