Came home to find my pear tree stripped bare overnight

[fridgefullofplums]

Returned home to find my pear tree (back garden) stripped clean. No sign of any on the ground or anywhere nearby. I am gutted!!!! It was my best ever crop and those pears were a thing of beauty. Any ideas if any bird or animal could have done this is such an efficient and successful way?

No answers but get a wildlife camera for next year. Whoever/whatever is sure to be back.

wtf!! Did you take it off him? What did you say?

This happened with my cherry tree, overnight all the fruit disappeared. I was devastated!
The tree in question is in a fruit cage, so not birds or squirrels. We think it was caterpillars. And yes they could easily strip a small tree over the course of a day and night.
As to apples and pears, foxes definitely take the fallen fruit, but I don't think they can get it off the tree.

We've had deer do this to our apple tree. I've heard starlings so this too.

As in OW/other woman like having an affair?

please tell me you sent the footage to the governors!

Can you imagine finding out your husband is having an affair and he spends his time with her stealing fruit 🤔

Too embarrassing. I'd lock him in the attic and tell everyone that sadly he'd died, body swept out to sea.

🤣

Darling I’m sorry but you insist on buying fruit from the supermarket. Doreen makes me feel alive, stealing fruit and then going back to her place to make jam or chutneys.

Squirrels definitely do this.

😆

But starlings shit everywhere. You'd definitely notice if a flock had spent time in your garden . I presume parakeets are the same.

Op come round to mine - pears galore! I do have a camera on my garden, to keep an eye on my hedgehogs who do indeed like a nibble or two of the rotting windfalls. Most of the windfalls however seem to go the ants, the magpies and the woodpeckers who maybe are just eating the ants. Starlings and squirrels seem utterly unbother3d by the free feast.

same happened to our tree last year - our pears are hard and never ripen - we have squirrels/ rats / foxes

I would say somebody has taken them, we have a pear tree and lots of birds / squirrels in the garden. They often knock the pears off the tree and eat them, but they usually don’t eat the whole of them and the remnants are left over the grass!

I also want to hear the rest of this story.

In my previous house I had the most wonderful, big, blousy poppies. I was headed up to London for work and spotted a chap lurking across the road and walked around the corner to walk down to the train station, but just felt something was wrong, so turned on my heel and walked back to my house. Then I spotted him with a pair of secateurs and a paper bag, snippy the heads off of my poppies, I let rip a yell and he dropped the bag, I tore him off a strip and took the seeds into the house. TBH, if he had asked, I would have given him a selection of poppies but he was stealing. I also had a very large Rosemary bush in the front garden and most Sundays, I would see one of my neighbours, waving at me and cutting a sprig for their Sunday roast.

Frankly, OP, that level of clearance suggests two legged creatures... motion cameras are the way to go.

You pick them before they go soft, ie ripen them off the tree. Unlike apples, they ripen from the inside out. When they look nearly ready you lift the base upwards, and if the core comes off the tree without tugging it, it is ready to pick.

I would say a person! Animals would leave mess … put ring in your garden!

How lovely! I love fruit trees, I've got a Crab apple, fig and Olive tree and I want more...sorry op slight derail there!

Sorry worriedbeyondwords I didn't mean it was great that the birdies had scoffed all your fruit, I was impressed by your trees...

@Meadowfinch You can't leave us with just that. More details please!

I also had a very large Rosemary bush in the front garden and most Sundays, I would see one of my neighbours, waving at me and cutting a sprig for their Sunday roast

FFS.

People thinking that just because it's in your front garden, it's shared property! 😤

In your shoes I would have been tempted to go over there with a list of names of people who could do some work on it, and ask them how much they're willing to contribute, seeing that they obviously think it's a shared asset!!!

😮 People are such scumbags.

Squirrels. Happened to my friend and my parents.

Squirrel stripped my olive tree bare of all the olives in about a day. Ripped off loads of leaves too. It also went mad for the neighbour's hazel and a carpet of nut shells covered our flower bed below the tree. Once they discover a food source, they strip it very quickly. The fact there are no pears at all left suggests it's something like this rather than a human, unless it's human height. In that case it might be a neigbour!

What on earth!?

The audacity of some people. Tell me about what he had to say for himself