What animal would do this to our cucumbers???

We spent most of the day outside, then drove to Dairy Queen to get ice cream. We were talking about the lightning bugs and how our daughter's boyfriend, who lives in the city, never sees them like they are out here in the country. We took him behind the pool house, where our veggie garden is, and behind that, a large field of beans. We're marveling at the hundreds of lightning bugs when my husband says, "Who pulled this out?" And it was part of a big cucumber vine, pulled out by the roots. Then we looked in the garden, and ONE ENTIRE HILL of cucumbers was ripped out. We had just been out there and picked a cucumber from it this afternoon! (It was yummy, too!) The next hill over looked like something just flipped the plants over, and attempted to rip those out as well. Next, we checked the zucchini, and there was evidence that something had been in that, but it's quite huge and apparently, it couldn't get whatever it wanted from that one. It didn't bother the sweet corn or the spinach, just the cucumbers and zucchini. What on earth would have done that? We grow these every year, and we've never had this happen!

Sounds more like vandals than varmints ?

If your yard isn't fenced, maybe a dog was digging for something like a mole.
My beagle gets into stuff when she is following a scent no matter how old. A ground hog ?
Did you see any footprints? A rabbit also may have been looking for a place to dig a nest out.

We're sure it wasn't vandals. We live in the middle of nowhere, and it looks like whatever it was tried to drag it out into the bean field. It did take part of the one plant, because it was totally missing. The rest of it was part way to the field.

Right now, we're thinking groundhog, but we have no real clues, since we're in a drought and it had been a couple of days since we last watered. The ground is too hard for tracks to be left. It's just so weird that the entire plant was torn out and not broken off.

We'll see if we have plants left tomorrow morning. If whatever it is liked what it got, it could be back!

I am voting for groundhogs. My troublemakers are juvenile eating plant leaves but the larger adults I understand like to pull out the whole plant.

-Kim

Yep, I'm thinking groundhogs. I watched a big groundhog uproot one strawberry plant after another one afternoon.... By the time I ran downstairs and dashed yelling across the back yard, brandishing my hoe at him, he had pulled up 7, and taken just one bite from 3 of them. I haven't had them pull up cukes, but I've had them pull down a tomato plant & uproot it. With those huge digging claws, it's easier for them to pull up a whole plant than to break a piece off. I'd be a little less annoyed with them (but only a little) if they actually ate what they destroyed.

Whatever it was, it didn't return. Maybe we scared it when we walked out there. Groundhogs would be very likely, since there are a lot of them around here. Turns out that the lack of that cucumber plant didn't hurt anything. You know how cucumbers are... they produce like rabbits. LOL.

I wish mine would produce like rabbits! I've lost them to wilt, although we did get to harvest the first flush. Next year, I will be more careful about covering ALL the cucumber vines with row cover until they are blooming heavily, or I may use a variety that doesn't require a pollinator & leave the row cover on all season.