We used to lose our apricot crop the same way. The tree was close to the street. Just about when they were ripe to perfection and the squirrels were sampling them, the tree would get stripped clean overnight. My son saw Mexicans doing it, too. My peach trees were in the front yard, closer to the house, and got quite big, so they didn’t bother them. But the squirrels got them. There was one tree at each end of the house and their feet on the roof at dawn sounded like a superhighway overhead. They would run from one end of the house to the other just to make sure both trees were devastated an equal amount.
We call it the Squirrel 500, it sounds like a race up on the roof.