Devastation 1 and 2

I was away a week. Just a week. I left a Douglas Fir pine forest by the entrance to our little road, by our post box. And what happens? The people in the 'big house' have sold the wood of thirty fir trees. And tree fellers came and hacked it all down. There is now just one solitary fir tree left. There it is.

There's a horrible stillness and a more horrible mess. I am reminded of the pictures of Passchendaele.

Look, here's Kevin some months ago, posing by our new post box... surrounded by fir trees. And now...

That was Devastation No1. Devastation No.2 concerns my peach tree. I was carefully biding my time, waiting for the perfect point of ripeness. No animals, insects or birds were showing too much of an interest. But, I was away for one week, and the tree is totally peachless!

There are quite a few peach stones on the ground beneath it, but not the hundreds that would have matched the number of peaches... 
There are several possible explanations:
1) Kevin ate them all, some of them on the spot because they were so delicious;
2) Birds came and ate them;
3) A stranger* sneaked in and picked/ate them;
4) Kevin has secretly picked and stowed them to make surprise peach jam/peach juice/peach melba ice cream.
Who knows?

There is one tiny little coincidental event... In my absence, Kevin visited the farmer, and was presented with some delicious peach jam, 'made that morning'. Hmmm... 
No, Kat is not capable of such thievery!

And this? What is this?! It was revealed, sticking out of the side of Cottage #2, by the sudden absence of peaches. Not impressed!

 * The Mushroom Man, Antoine is a prime suspect. He drove up to our house to park, but then realised that we were 'home' and waved an apology and left. We then met him a few minutes later on the footpath with a big basket for 'collecting mushrooms' from the forest, 'had we seen any?' No, we had not, because we were not coming from the forest, but from our house, on the way to visit A and B. Yes, Antoine, you are top of my list!