Looks like a baby raccoon. A tame one, for that matter. It would help if you gave the location you had your encounter in, foxil. Here in the US? Recently? Cute photo!

Well in general ground hogs don't leave parts uneaten but squirrels do. So do gophers and rats. I tend to bet on squirrels simply because I have so many of them. That is one reason why many pick at color break and finish ripening indoors rather than leaving ripening fruit on the vine. Once color break happens the fruit gets nothing else from the plant so nothing is gained by leaving it on the plant. Dave

Thanks for getting back to me, Catherinet. I did a little more reading and found out that like rats, the newly born opossums are hairless and they do have teeth like this picture (downloaded from the internet) here shows: I also realized that the opossums do build nests like birds do on the tree, but they can also build nests elsewhere such as under the hoot of a car (as pictured above). Close to where the dead animal was found were a couple of huge trees among other fruit trees I have in my yard. We had Hurricane Hermine blowing down things for us this past week. I think that might help explain a lot of the mystery as I begin to piece things up together. A family of opossum might have taken residence there. The young could have died in the nest earlier on or it might have died when the wind blew it down from the nest. The limbs could have easily chipped off as it fell down from a height. Since they're newly born, I would imagine their limbs are very fragile. The fact that the skin peeling off might be due to the animal drying out at some point and then having to stay out in our hot sun here for who knows how long until I discovered it. These speculations are all very plausible and it made a lot of sense to me now as I've seen mature opossums around in my yard sometimes. I think not to suspect anything else ... unless I see a repeat of a similar incident. I know ... I'm always nervous when I see dead animals lying around. You don't know what they carry with them ..., but RIP little guy and no more carcasses in my yard! Thanks again--I do appreciate your input.

No, definitely not muskrat...we have those too and are easily identified by their rat tail and their chubby bodies. Also they swim across the pond, but are never so animated like this guy.