The great sunflower mystery

Well, after my success growing sunflowers last summer I decided to give a repeat performance. A couple of days ago the seedlings finally broke through the soil and became visible. Naturally, I got very excited about this and the next morning rushed outside again to see how much bigger they had grown, and, to my absolute disgust, they had all been attacked by something or some-one and the leaves (an extremely vital part of a seedling) were missing- presumably bitten off.

Being the amazing ecological detective that I am, I was able to discern that the leaves were removed in such a way that I could narrow it down to either teeth biting them off, or sharp finger nails pinching them off. Of course, I didn't want to think that some-one would have deliberately sabotaged my sunflowers so I assumed that a herbivorous animal had done the damage, and since I have never seen a wallaby in the area I decided the most likely culprit was one of the neighbour's rabbits which occasionally find their way out of their cages. So I was just about to declare the loss of my baby sunflowers as a natural disaster when a thought occurred to me- My neighbour, Pat, who has a garden adjoining mine had sunflower seedlings the same age as mine. I quickly went back outside to see if she had any remaining seedlings and saw, to my surprise, that all of her seedlings were unharmed- every single, last one of them (and she had lots because she just made a little trench and poured in seeds so they are all far too crowded and will need to be thinned out before they get much bigger).

Now this made me suspicious. If one of the rabbits did get out, why would it hop past the 100 sunflower seedlings in Pat's part of the garden which were directly on its path into my garden and then eat all 12 of mine?

So now the evidence is pointing to a human culprit.

And another mystery. Who is the woman I saw pulling weeds out of the lawn the other day from my kitchen window? And why has Peter's (who lives in number 1) car not been here since I came back from Launceston last week? And why does the new car park in a different position to Peter's old car?

Could it be that I have a new neighbour in number 1? And could she be responsible for the sunflower carnage?

Or was it Pat, a jealous fellow gardener? I don't want to believe that because I gave her some seeds from last years sunflower's so that she could grow hers.

And where is Peter from number 1? Could he have moved out due to the reoccurring, guilty nightmares he had after savagely attacking my sunflowers?

Will I ever find out what happened to my poor, innocent babies?