Mice and Strawberries

These are my strawberries!

They have been left in neat piles all around my allotment, between the rows of potatoes and broccoli, near the marrow plants, in fact just about anywhere within a reasonable mouse travelling distance of the strawberry plants.

At least I assume that the guilty party is a mouse or a family of mice - probably breeding happily in my nice warm compost heap. But why are they hoarding these strawberries in piles all around the place? What bit of the strawberry are they eating in particular? Why so many? Why are they hoarding? Why do they pick mostly unripe fruit? Or do they eat the ripe ones whole and think the others will ripen in storage?! A bit like the supermarket fruit?!




Please can any one throw any light on
this phenomenon?











And is there any way I can protect my fruit without resorting to killing the mice, which I just cannot do? Perhaps next year I shall strew holly twigs between the rows of fruit. I have successfully used that technique to protect seedlings in my greenhouse in the spring.