What ate my (entire!) shrub?

Post date: 2020-08-13 05:08:48

I have a raised deck, part of which is inaccessible from the ground without going through doors. It's about 15 feet off the ground not counting the railing. I used to have a young weigela out there. Today I went to water it and it was just gone. Which animal can climb on a roof and would eat an entire shrub? I have other plants on a different part of the deck I'd like to protect!

There are a few inches of stem still sticking out of the pot, and some discarded leaves and broken chunks of stem, but the rest has vanished, and not over the edge either. Even the soil isn't disturbed. Honestly, other than the access issue, I'd sooner think that a human had lopped it off and carried it away than that something ate it.

I had planted it out there a month or so ago, and it was doing very well, probably about two feet tall and bushy. The main stem was about a pencil's thickness. On the other side of the deck, which is more easily accessible from the ground, I have dwarf blueberry bushes and a ninebark, so I'd like to figure out how to protect them! Or are weigelas especially delicious or something? Some ornamental grass and a clematis were also destroyed in the same fashion but less thoroughly. Those at least I can vaguely imagine being edible, whereas the weigela was woody. There aren't chips around either, just a few big chunks of stem.

I don't think it was a person because 1. why?? and 2. they'd have either needed an extension ladder in a spot visible from the street, or to go through a fence gate and two doors. Admittedly it wouldn't have been that physically challenging, but the stairs to the porch go right past a window where our big dog sleeps all day and, well, see point 1.

This is in a lightly urban part of Wisconsin. Somewhat dense houses, lots of trees. We definitely have squirrels but I haven't seen/heard of racoons around the neighborhood. There are also ground-level crops of much tastier things that have not been disturbed.

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