Sorry for the damage--annoying! Can you share some pics for us? If the plants are large-ish and fully uprooted, I'd suspect javelina. They love to completely dig up hesperaloe (red "yucca") in my neighborhood, and by my work too. In my last local garden they would dig up prickly pears and totally munch on them, and the roots, or they'd grab plants in pots and drag them, pot attached, across the garden and sidewalk, hah. It could be something else, but when big plants are uprooted, and their roots (and more) are eaten, that's my first suspect, LOL. Keep us posted, sorry again for the damage.

Javelina normally ignore Agaves, but your plants may have encountered an unruly individual or bachelor group traveling through the area, still learning the ropes. Hopefully, the perp(s) will move on and you won't experience a repeat, because if Javelinas, this is a fight you cannot win.

Thanks for the replies. Javelina - a peccary? I live in Leisure World in Mesa and I've seen lots of rabbits, feral cats and even coyotes but never anything that looked like a pig. The rabbits around here are generally pretty small but a few weeks ago I saw a rather large one with very long ears - I was surprised as it was about the size of a large cat. It looked a lot different from the normal rabbits I have seen over the past 3 years.

My Agaves are pretty small (the ones that got eaten) - about 6 inches in diameter - planted about two years ago. One that was uprooted and eaten was the same size and species as the one in the upper right of the picture below. You can see the remaining leaves that were left after the meal. I actually have a variety of Agaves and whoever the culprit was only seems to like this one particular species. The other Agaves were not touched.

I was thinking something smaller than a peccary as my neighbor, who has much larger plants of the same species, lost a number of the same species earlier this year. Originally I thought it might have been the heat that killed them but I noticed that something had dug around the plants that died. See picture below:

The large one in the middle is almost two feet across. The gravel immediately around the base of the plants had been pushed aside, almost as if someone was planning on digging them up. Originally I thought maybe my neighbor had asked his landscaper to remove them but when I contacted him he said he did not ask his landscaper to do any work this summer. Almost all of his Agaves of this species look like the one above with gravel around the base pushed out. Based on this I thought it might have been small rabbits or rodents digging to get to the roots. Mine, being smaller than his, was completely uprooted as you can see in the first picture.

Last year I made the mistake of planting a spineless Opuntia but soon something was munching on the pads (rabbits I think). Over that winter it was eaten to the ground but the roots had still survived, so I dug it up and put it in a planter where it revived and started regrowth, but if I now have something that eats the roots, then there is nothing to revive.

I have a variety of cacti with spines that I could plant to replace the eaten plants but I have had bad luck in that area with cacti. I lost several barrel cacti in that location - instead of growing they just seemed to get smaller and dry up - dunno why. I planted Agave as replacement and they seemed to do better but now I have something eating them - although I hope its just that one species and leaves the other Agave alone.

I saw what they're after this morning. Big fat tasty grubs under the roots of the agave.