I've got a half dozen havahart type live animal traps but so far he's not gone near them. I've baited with lettuce, canteloupe, melon rinds, broccoli, and red beets but the bait goes untouched. I've gotten a few rabbits in the trap but none large enough to do any damage in the garden. I pulled up the chewed lettuce heads, used them for bait but it seems he only bites on a plant once, even in the garden, each time its a new plant that got eaten. I had 300 heads of lettuce, after this week I'm down to about 50 tops, and some of them have damage again now. At this time in the season, as the lettuce bolts, I basically just let it go to seed for next years crop. The problem is he's even chewed off the flowering stalks. I added a wire fence around the roof of the shed on one side today, I increased the overhang on the fence and sprayed the lettuce with some pesticide that I hoped would deter his appetite. I left the garden at 7pm to put some tools away, and came back in less than 5 minutes and four heads of lettuce were chewed down to the ground. The part that gets me is that it can eat that fast. I'm 300lbs and can't eat that much that fast. I gave the remaining plants a good shot of Malathion in hopes the odor deters him. I've grown a garden here for 15 years, this is the first year I've had anything get through the fence. I've had insect issues last year, but never a furry critter getting over the fence. I would have fully expected burrowing rather than climbing, so far, he's not even tried to burrow under the fence. This weekends project will be to install a proper gate or door, I poured a threshold at the point of entry so nothing can dig under, now I need to make an easy to walk through gate or door. The way it is now I have to take down a 6' tall upper gate and remove a fence panel to get in. The plan is to make a screen door from 1/4" rat wire which closes against a cement stop at the bottom and is hung from the adjacent fence post with hinges. I never thought a groundhog would be able to scale a 6' fence, but there's no other way in. Maybe I need to electrify the fence next. There has to be more than one of these things, but the only one on the trail cam was huge. I had to give the game cam back the other day, so I don't have the option to keep it up. I just can't figure how something so small can consume so much so fast, and not even leave any scraps on the ground. The eaten heads look like something just took a huge bite out the middle right down to the ground, leaving only the stump and a few outer leaves standing.

Oh, I can now see why you thought they were deer droppings, Gumby. You were probably referring to the clay pellets like what howelbama said haha. I was referring to the black dots on the lettuce leaves. Not the brown ones. But again, thank you sooo much to all of you who tried to help me out. I knew there had to be something living in my lettuce.. but I didn't know what it was. I used to live in missouri and I never had any caterpillar problems before for some reason. But then I moved back to California and now I'm finding all sorts of pests I've never seen before. : )

Peter, I have the very same thing happening now with my Lollo Rosso Red head lettuce, yesterday I got the same thing when I barely tried to move the dead leaves, I noticed the middle leaves were good, but the plant came up in my hands so easily and when I checked for root there was none, and there was no innder stem, just a frame, some some sucker ate it up. I have 20 heads and would hate to lose them all, well now 18 as two are dead.

Are you seeing roundish holes with clean borders? Or does it look like little teeth have been munching on your greens? Cabbage moths (those white butterflies you see flitting happily around the garden... the ones that I used to LOVE and now run around yelling at...) will lay eggs on your brassicas, which broccoli is, and sometimes lettuce (from what I've read) and then the resulting caterpillars will voraciously eat through your leaves. The holes start out very small, a little larger than a pinhole, when the caterpillars are about 1/2 a cm long, and will get increasingly larger as they eat and grow. If you see a fresh hole, look closely around it and see if you notice a green caterpillar around it. They blend in amazingly well, but once you know what you're looking for, you can spot them more easily. When they get out of control in my yard, my collards end up looking like someone ate all the leafy parts and just left the ribs.