Can't erase imported Illustrator file in Animate

Hey, I'm trying to animate a growing flower in Animate and want to do it by drawing the flower in Illustrator first, so I can simply erase a little bit of it every frame in Animate, then reversing the keyframes. But I encountered the problem, that I can't figure out how to convert my object to a drawing, so I can edit it, because the Eraser-Tool simply doesnt work on imported files. Do you guys have any ideas on how to solve it, or have another solution on how to make my growing flower animation? Thanks in advance, Vincent.