WHO IS EATING MY MATERS

I am not a really big tomato fan. Big, fat and juicy tomatoes don't appeal. I don't eat foods cooked in tomato sauce.  I would have been a crummy Italian and am un-American by not liking pizza slathered in tomato sauce.  So why do I grow tomatoes?

Ok, the little ones I kind of like.  Grape tomatoes are a fun snack but the biggest I will go for are plum tomatoes. I prefer them for they are mostly meat with few seeds and rarely a gushy middle. Do you all really like that gushy middle stuff??

I know--I hear you groaning in disbelief and horror.

But every year I do grow plum tomatoes for my salads. I usually just have one plant which gives me all I need plus some for my neighbors.  However, something has happened this year. A mystery has hit my yard.

I was working on a bumper crop this year and it seems that they were all ripening at the same time. The plant was hanging out of the cage,  heavy with beautiful red fruit. That one plant had at least 30 ripe and ready. I made a note to be sure and harvest them the next day. I sure wish I had taken a picture but I had no idea where this was going.

Not my picture but looks a lot like my plant before theft.

I had my basket ready yesterday morning and walked towards my raised beds for the bounty. As I got closer, I was surprised that none of the red that had covered my plant the night before was visible. Hum, I thought as I approached, perhaps the wind blew them off.

But no--there was nothing, nada, zilch. There were no tomatoes on the ground, no half eaten remnants, no foot prints, no scat ( also known as animal poop), just nothing but the unripened fruit still attached.  Just the night before it had been a overburdened plant, now not one ripe tomato in sight. I have grown them for years and this is a first.

Even Google has been little help.  I have a fenced yard which kind of eliminates the neighbor element----Google's prime suspect.

Have you had this happen or have you heard of something like this?

Who ate my maters?