S. Worthen | Weblog

I might suspect a human-type culprit too if the circumstances were more agreeable to it. But the deck where I'm keeping all these plants is on the third floor of the house and, unless the human had a key to my apartment, they would have to scale the side of the building. And personally, I think that, if they'd bothered to scale the side of the building, they could use their time up there more productively than by stealing one or two plants at a time and then climbing back up for more a different day. And the plants reliably disappear at nighttime, so it would have to be a human climber who didn't need a great deal of light to climb.

A squirrel could also be a possible culprit, but we've had squirrels up there many times before that I've seen without any real havoc coming from their presence. Unless it's a new hyper-intelligent (in a wierd way) squirrel. Also, half the time, the culprit either uproots the plant and leaves it abandoned elsewhere on the deck, or else chops it down at its tender young base. The other half, however, have entirely vanished.