Vanishing sunflower?

[3amAndImStillAwake]

We grew a sunflower this year and it flowered a few days ago, much to the delight of our three year old who had been watering it. It was there this morning, a big, healthy looking flower. We went out for the day and we've come back and the flower has just gone. There's no trace of it, not even some petals on the ground.

Does anything eat sunflowers in a way that would mean they'd carry off the whole thing?? A team of sunflower seed loving squirrels perhaps? We just can't imagine where it can have gone.

Was it somewhere that another person could get to it?
Has the whole stem gone or just the flower?

Yes, theoretically our neighbour could have reached over the fence (it's lower at the end of the garden where the flower was) and got it. But that would be pretty weird.. We don't know them that well but they've never come across as flower stealing oddballs.

It looks like a fairly clean break on the stem just below where the flower was.

I've grown lots of sunflowers before & nothing animal-wise has every taken a flower, so if there's no evidence in your garden that it's snapped in the wind it does sound like it's been flower-knapped.

I bet it was a squirrel, they are clever little buggers! Notorious for nicking sunflower heads

I love a mystery!
I’m going to imagine a pluck little squirrel

Yes, squirrels. They did exactly that to one of mine and DH caught them in the act.

Really? Squirrels? I never knew they did that. (And am quite thrilled by the idea!)

Really?? Our garden backs onto woodland so we get a lot of squirrels. But I didn't think they'd steal a flower!

Squirrels have taken some of ours as well in the past. It is very annoying.

So do they take the flower before the seeds are fully formed?
No squirrels near us (or at least none that have ever come in our garden) so not experienced it.

Squirrels - they look cute but they're total arseholes. They've even bitten through the rope on my swingball more than once. They just like destroying things!

How annoying. We've not grown them before and DD was so disappointed her sunflower had gone.

But it's good to know I don't have neighbours getting trigger happy with their secateurs.