Well, I detest killing little creatures but I've about had it with
whatever is tearing up my garden. The last straw is it ate the seed pods
on two of my favorite new milkweeds. One variety had eleven seed pods on it and all but one is gone.

I had a lot of the A perennis seed pods, a couple looked close to being mature, as well as 5 seed pods on the A texana milkweed. I was so happy to think I'd have seed to share. Now the pods are half eaten with the immature seed scattered all over the ground. It even carried one pod up onto a tray of seedlings and left the opened remains in one of the seedling pots! No doubt, a good view from which to locate the next snack!

The only good to come of it is I've
salvaged the broken and chewed MW stems to try and root more plants. I think it must
be some kind of mouse or rat as it does it's damage at night. It has cut
off and opened milkweed pods and then carries them off and drops them all
along the ground when, I assume, it discovers the seed isn't mature. There's so much MW seed floss out there it looks like it's snowed!

It eats the tips out of the
Milkweed stems, chews up lower leaves on taller milkweed and eats all
the green tomatoes and strawberries (last two items I'm attempting to
grow this year).

This is what a grouping of green tomatoes look like this morning!

It seems odd it is attracted to milkweed but it began
earlier this year on my potting tables and has now been doing a great
lot of damage in the garden. Earlier in the spring it climbed an 8 foot
trellis and ate all of the newly sprouted growing tips on the wooly
pipevine. Now I guess it's discovered even tastier treats!

I just checked about purchasing one of those live traps to try and trap the little
guy but I can't locate them in town and to order one will require a week
to get here or pay outrageous shipping costs to get one here more quickly.
My son tried building a live trap out of a 5 gal bucket and all this
little creature did was climb up the ramp, drop onto the piece of
swinging shelf that held a nice big glob of peanut butter (the shelf was
supposed to swing down with his weight, landing him in the bottom of
the bucket) and cleaned up the peanut butter, then obviously climbed
back out without tripping the swinging flap. Either it isn't heavy
enough to swing the flap or it held onto somewhere while enjoying the peanut
butter!

I am sick at heart over the whole thing. I guess I just need to vent.
Mary

PS: here is my first bloom on one of the A viridis plants I purchased from Monarch Watch. I was hoping I might get a pod off of it but the blooms will probably be chopped down by this little monster before anything has time to mature!