Pear tree mystery

[miss_jayne]

Quote:
Sorry that only happens in NM!

well, you gotta wrap your head with tin foil first though....

 

[fowltemptress]

I was going to say raccoons . . . that's the only thing I can think of capable of that sort of thing. There's a pair of raccoons that strip my FIL's fig trees every year. They wait for them to get ripe and move in, but it takes them a few nights (FIL hates figs and is glad of something to take care of them for him). I can't imagine that happening in one night . . . bears? Fruit eating, night flying buzzards? A practical joke? I can't imagine.

 

[Emzyyy]

ROFL!!! THAT IS HYLERIOUS!
I WONDER WHAT TOOK THEM?!

 

[Linda in San Diego]

We had a pear tree at our first house, but we learned that pears do not ripen on the tree like other fruits. They should be pickend and ripened off the tree. Here is one website with that information.

Most pear varieties in Texas reach harvest maturity in August and September. They should be picked and ripened off the tree. Pears remaining on the tree too long ripen poorly and have poorer texture and flavor.

Ripen pears at room temperature in a well ventilated area. They will ripen in 1 to 2 weeks. Refrigerate the fruit after ripening until consumed or processed. For longer storage life, refrigerate unripe pears as near 32 degrees F as possible and then ripen as desired. http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/fruit/pear.html

and another source:

Pears are a unique fruit that ripen best off the tree. So Pears are shipped fully mature, but not always ripe. This assures that pears you buy are in good condition to ripen as you need then after you buy them. http://www.usapears.com/pears/faq.asp

But, having said that, I cannont imagine what could have cleaned out all of your pears so quickly!​

 

[ruth]

Thanks all for the suggestions and I knew you would all find it amazing. We do have chipmunks but they are very small and couldn't possibly strip this tree and carry off that much fruit. Possibly raccoons but I think our dogs would have gotten them long before they did this much work. The pears weren't ripe and were not falling off tree yet. Squirrels (or something) was picking them and throwing them to ground where we would find them partially eaten or with just a bite out of them but I wasn't worried about that because there were so many. Just two days ago I was showing someone the tree and asking if they knew how to put up pears and wanted any. They said they had never seen a tree so loaded but the pears weren't ripe yet and needed more time. Next day they were all GONE. This is not a small pear tree. It's branches are so big around they look like an old live oak. The tree could easily be over 100 years old because the home is 100 years old but it's the second home that was built on this old plantation. Descendants of the original family said there used to be other pear trees and they would sit on balcony and shoot the pears out of the trees.

I'm tempted to go into woods and look around. If whatever took them, piled them somewhere they shouldn't be too hard to find - it would make a mountain.

Oh well....real mystery. I didn't even get the dehydrator out of the box. I bought it after so many plums went to waste because we ate all we could, gave away gallons, and let the ground get carpeted with them - even fed them to chickens. I don't know how to make preserves so that's why I bought the dehydrator and called my mom to see if she would come when the pears got ready.

They were the hard pears but I have been eating them and though they are hard, if peeled, I found them crisp and tart and very good.

I still can't believe this. These pears were so big and heavy that one pear filled my hand.

 

[menkot]

Are you sure it wasn't a two legged bandit? We had a plum tree that the exact same thing happened to. It has never happened again and only happened while we were at church. I still don't know how they got all the way to the top of the tree to strip it like that but nothing else was capable of removing that many plums in that short amount of time. Whoever it was knew we would be gone. They took the ones off the ground too. I am thinking plum wine lol. Why else would you want the ones on the ground??

 

[ruth]

Quote:
Sorry that only happens in NM!

well, you gotta wrap your head with tin foil first though....

I'm going with the aliens theory. Only one that makes sense and hey, this is deep south, Mississippi - home to more alien abductions and picky probing than anywhere.

 

[LuckysMom]

The same thing happened to our peach tree last year. I asked my husband one day, "Did you pick all the peaches off the tree?, because they are all gone". He said no, and got up to look. He just stood there in shock and disbelief. We never did figure out what happened to them.
This year I picked the peaches early, before anything else got to them.

 

[crtrlovr]

we have a young peach tree that had been "sick" and had recovered nicely; it actually had about 12-18 peaches on it this year that looked quite nice. I checked them a couple of days ago and they were nearly ripe, but not quite. I thought I'd give them another day and check them again. They were ALL gone. Nothing on the ground, no pits, no bits of peel, no nothing. Just vanished. sigh....

 

[goatkeepers]

Thats wild!!!

I would love to know what happened!
Its hard to believe that anything could strip such a large tree over night...