What could be harvesting my green strawberries?

Hello,

It has become apparent to us that something very agile is harvesting our strawberries that are in a half meter high hugel bed. They're harvesting all of them,  but they make little piles of the green ones and leave them there. There are no obvious signs on them on what could have done it. So it is not a bird.

Fortunately for us, we also have strawberries in one of the green houses that we get for ourselves.
But we're really curious about what animal could be doing this. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

We would never harm whatever it is that is doing this-- only set a live trap for it if it's something non-native. We live in Brittany, France.

Cordially

A neighbor's child ....

LOL. It does seem like something a child might do. But it's not a child. Unless that child gets out of bed at night and crosses a river just to come get our strawberries when they could find some much closer and on their side of the river. And then they would still wake up in the morning and spend the next day at school.

Maybe there are unknown squatters down by the river.

They home-school their child or maybe the squatters are picking the strawberries.

That's a romantic image.

I did what I should have done in the first place and asked Google. It says it's a squirrel. I was really hoping it would be a hedgehog, but they will only eat strawberries that have already fallen. Our squirrels are red squirrels, so I'm happy with that. And thinking about this super organised one, which I imagine as a mom.

I have had a variety of small mammals go after my strawberries, ripe and unripe, before.

Thinking about hugels, do you notice any vole/mole/mouse pressure? In my experience, I have a very well fed chipmunk who I have a steady peace treaty with over the last couple years. I plant him his own strawberry plants and I have a more protected section for me. He has, in the past, hoarded the berries in one foul swoop so I'm leaning towards those pesky little critters.

Sounds to me like someone in the rodentia family....chipmunks and squirrels both love to make piles of harvests that get left about in odd places for us to find. When strawberries are in season we have found them like that, both ripe and unripe, (though never the two together!) and the ripe ones always have a bite or two out of them. In childhood we lived in a piñon forest and the chipmunks were forever getting inside the house and stashing the pine nuts in any dark crevice - If I was keen for a nutty snack back then, it was always a good idea to search the shoe closet - the heels of shoes would be filled to the brim. I tend to think of these tree ninjas, as I call them - as 'save it for later' creatures, and I have read that squirrels are responsible for the planting of many delicious plants and trees in the wild, as they stash things away all year and then inevitably forget the location of some of their buried caches. I can absolutely relate!

There are so many knowledgeable people here, I thought surely someone would know who it would be. Thank you for the story!

Just finding this thread. I would have guessed squirrels or chipmunks. They ravage my strawberries, peaches, and so many other things.