second pic.. you already pruned it down ??? .. if not .. its an animal at least 2 or 3 foot tall ... e.g. rat with white tail ...

these plants are invasive in many states ... who planted it for you???

ken

Ken, I did not prune this bush. Wonder if a deer might of done that? My landscaper installed it

"Rat with white tail".....LOL!

Rabbit or deer....

No way that was a cat...they don't have the teeth (or desire) to gnaw on woody stems.

Sheesh, I thought you meant the scratched lower trunks!

small rat = mice or voles

rat with stripe = skunk

rat with cotton tail = wabbit .. and i never saw evidence of rabbit cleanly severing shrubs at height... nibble.. girdle..e tc ... not this type of pruning .. besides the fact.. it would have had to been a 2 foot rabbit

rats with wings = pigeon, crows.. etc ...

rat in water = carp ...

tree rats === need i explain that one ....

masked rats = coons ...

etc ... lol ... they are all vermin ...

you need a better landscaper ... i have no respect for him.. after planting an invasive ...

ken

You forgot the taller rats - deer.

We've seen quite a few shrubs attacked in this manner. It seems there is a new breed of cat with opposable thumbs. No surprize that they attack shrubbery but where are they getting the pruners?

Where do you live?

We have Mountain Beavers (Aplodontia rufa) here in the northwest that eat some plants like that, but I don't know if they would eat a Burning Bush.

Maybe Sam is right. Someone may have cut off the stems when the leaves were bright red to supplement a bouquet on the dinner table. :-)

Mike

I don't believe I would ever knowingly plant a burning bush. And if I did, I wouldn't plant it so close to the house. Those suckers get BIG in my area. (Obviously I have had bad experiences with burning bushes.)

The nice neat cut surfaces suggest rabbits to me.

+oM

I had squirrels do a similar thing to my fothergilla...to use for nest building. If there were very few pieces laying around, I'd suspect them.

That would be tree rats. ;-)

tj

Hmmmm, guess I'm alone here. That is dead-on for rabbit damage in my world, not even any controversy.

+oM

i would guess deer. we had 3 burning bushes that were doing beautifully and something chewed one of them down. it never bounced back, so we chucked it. i think it was a deer that did the damage. i've seen them in our subdivision usually in the Fall/Winter time grazing on plants.

While deer do like Euonymus, ragged bites are deer; sharp cuts that look like they were made with a pruner are from rabbits.

Thank you, thank you, Lacyvail. Really thought for a while here that I was the only one that knew of this factoid.

+oM

I am aware of that factoid. But rabbits generally leave a lot of what they've bitten off laying around. If the bit off stuff was gone, then squirrels become suspect as they too leave sharp cuts on smaller branches such as these.

My tree rat rant.

tj