What has taken my apples?

[Okayornot]

Three weeks ago I had 5 trees absolutely laden with different varieties of eating apples. I also have 2 crab apple trees, one of cooking apples and some damsons in the same part of the garden.
I went on holiday for a fortnight and all of the eating apples have gone, every last one. I don't think wasps are the culprit as there would be half eaten fruits on the tree and rotting on the ground, squirrels are usually a bit messy I think and drop some of whatever they are picking, and we have deer fenced the garden so it isn't deer. None of my other trees have been touched. So what has eaten my apples? Was it rats? And if so, what on earth will they have done with literally hundreds of apples? Does this mean there was a swarm of rats while I was away??

Can people get into your garden?

I don't think so, but even if they did I'd be amazed if they'd pick every single apple without leaving a few. Plus they won't have been ripe until probably the end of September/ early October.

We went away for the weekend once when I was a kid and on our return we found that our apple tree had been completely stripped of all fruit.

It was some local boys. The fools made the mistake of bragging about it at school, and I overheard them.

Could it have been very hungry birds??? My dad has lost a lot of his fruit this year to rampaging squirrels

IME animals tend to gnaw or peck at fruit. I’ve never known anything to eat an entire fruit without leaving some of it behind. I expect it is humans.

We've got a squirrel that picks one apple, takes a chunk out of it, doesn't like it so throws it down and moves onto the next apple, takes another chunk, drops it... it's stripped most of one tree, but all the apples are at the bottom. I could see that a squirrel with rats at the bottom could completely disappear an entire crop.

It's probably the same "thing" as took all my plums.

Scrumpers for sure. Our cherry tree partly hangs over a wall and that side was stripped bare!

I think "who" rather than "what" is the question OP.

It's not a 'what' you are looking for, it's a 'who'.

It's odd- we are outside of a town and most people don't know our house is here. Am going to start using our wildlife cameras again...

The kids are annoyed they didn't steal the courgettes...

I would say squirrels. There is an apple tree on some woodland behind our garden which is like a food-laden assault course for them at the moment. Our electricity wires run just above it and it's funny to see them scamper along and throw themselves into the tree.

People would take under ripe apples for cider?

can’t imagine squirrels etc taking that many?

Animals would surely have made a mess and have gone for the cooking and crab apples.

Honestly we had so many apples it would be a proper operation to steal them all, especially as we have 2m fences and cctv on the house.
Will ask my tree surgeon if he is aware of apple thefts in the area!

I have a family of rooks who shamelessly pick my apples and pears and walk up the garden holding them by the stalk.They then peck away and leave the debris.
No debris, OP?

None. Makes animals seem less likely!

Do you have parakeets where you are? They decimate fruit crops here in south London.

None. Makes animals seem less likely!

Hmm - a very thorough and determined human, then.

Might be birds? We have mo apple trees in our garden (mostly palms and shrubs), and no apples in the surrounding gardens - mostly palms, magnolias and all that. But, there are apples on the ground in our garden, and neighbours said they have found apples as well.

Watching with interest. This happened with my Bramley last summer when we were on holiday. No debris and behind a locked gate, so not caused by humans. I've still no idea what happened. They're looking good this year.

Just been inspecting with DH and we think not humans as there are very few apples on the ground (and there were before we went and surely humans would leave any that just fell), the trees are so clean (only 5 apples left on all of the eating apple trees), and nothing else is stolen. But, begs the question of what sort of creature only wants eating apples and not crab apples, cookers or damsons. And also how to prevent this from happening next year!

I am so disappointed as was going to bottle our own juice for winter.