Wow! I had something eat my young kale plants one year. I think it was cutworms. They are nocturnal. You can make a cutworm collar with a toilet paper tube or a paper towel tube cut down to about 4 inches. Put the tube around the plant and push the tube to the base of the soil so an inch or two is buried into the soil.

are we to presume.. by your name. that you are California ... rather than Caledonia??

note that the stuff disappears ... little wormies and such.. can not make that large of a piece of material disappear overnight ... so i agree it has to be some sort of critter ... vermin ...

is one plant denuded in a single night???? or was all that damage done in one night ....

if it were something as large as a deer... you wouldnt probably find cloven footprints in the area .... in the worked soil ... as compared to the pathways ... etc ...

look for animal droppings .. those can usually be IDd ....

ken

That looks like rabbit damage to me. When my daughter was little we had pet rabbits (confined to a rather exotic penned bunny condo) and kale was their favorite green. Cost me a fortune buying it at the supermarket every week as I couldn't grow it fast enough to keep the buns happy. It could also be some sort of larger mammal but you might already have noticed if there were deer in the vicinity - they are generally hard to miss and you would have already noted some damage on other plants. But bunnies are very elusive and not overly noticeable except for the vanished plants.

It is certainly not an insect issue - if it is, I'd hate to see the size of the insect that could make that sort of damage!!

I am in California Bay area. Pleasanton City.

Also this damage happened overnight. I have never seen rabbit in my area, but may be it shows up only in the nights. I had seen rat/mouse, but caught at least some of them using 'bucket of death' method.

Those sharp, diagonal cuts sure look like rabbits.

tj

I'd guess rabbits, mice, or rats.

anything look familiar ... some ideas for protection also.. chicken wire may not keep out mice/rats ...... ken

https://www.google.com/search?q=rabbit+damage+to+vegetables&biw=911&bih=745&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit7Jv3xpXKAhVM5GMKHUQ4D0kQ_AUIBigB&dpr=0.9

It looks like the damage I had, which was caused by field mice, so rodents.