Interesting title but I am definitely an animal lover though I am not too keen about encountering a bear or cougar in my yard!! But rats! Years ago I had several nice paphs and one day I discovered most of them had been eaten down to the roots!! It turned out a neighbor's boy had dumped his rats into my yard and they found their way into my greenhouse and had something to eat!! I used traps. But over the course of the years I learned that the best rat catcher was not a cat but a possum, who also eats slugs. I also have leanred about using nonlethal tactics to protect your plants. That is just leave food in an area regularly that is away from the plants. However with the arrival of raccoons forget all the above!! Not only do they make a mess of things but much of the time it is done in sheer play, even carrying off my doormat and tossing it around!! So I just let it go. Plants are nice but I am adverse to killing animals who are hungry and dealing with situations that have been and are being created by the ineptitude of man.

Butterflypixie, I'm glad I didn't kill it then. It looked kind of ugly to me, but then again, I used to think caterpillars were ugly. lol I never knew that about some moths digging into the ground...very interesting. MissSherry, Darn, now I wish I would have kept it, but being that I was sure what it was, I was afraid that if it was anything good that I might be depriving it of food if I kept it and it needed to it. I did see it move. That's why I wasn't sure if it was a pupa or what it was. I know that my Monarch pupas didn't move while I had them here except of course when the caterpillars was wiggling around in there getting situated right after it went into pupation. Nope, it didn't have an holes in it as far as I could see. It was definitely alive. Cathy

Morz8: I went out with a flashlight and did find a caterpillar on the top of the soil! Only one... but maybe cutworms don't eat every night? It was also brown, so perhaps I missed it's buddies. I'll check again tomorrow night. I guess it's also possible I have multiple pests doing damage, if it does turn out to be only one. Maifleur: The poop was a dark brown color. I don't think it's turtles - the bed is raised 18 inches, so it seems like that would present a challenge for them. If rabbits have left your carrots alone then I guess there went my comfy theory that I had ruled out rabbits at least :). I'll have to see if I can find some way that they could be getting in the yard once it's light out again. Thank you, thank you both for your suggestions!!

Thanks for all the comments and helpful hints. I put the cheap Walmart dry dog food out in the evening and kill the diners at about 9PM and maybe again at 10PM. By morning it is typically gone, even though it was often sprayed with the ammonia. As it will stay light later I will have to adjust the schedule. Recently my nightly kill dropped to 20 one night, so I skipped about a week. I will put out the dog food tonight. Ok this will sound gross, but they also like chewed up chocolate or chocolate cookies. The very weird thing is I had a liquidy chocolate that I deposited on the ground. I did this about 4:00PM, then went to a play. Came back and checked about 9PM. I thought that the way the chocolate dropped to the ground and worked it's way into the dirt that they would be working on the chocolate awhile. Surprise, the Chocolate was ALL GONE, not a trace in all 8 spots. Wish I saw what happened. I may try that again tonight.