I had 6 plants a raccoon or some little critter came by and tore them up, I was disappointed to see my lil baby's gone but two of those plants were still thriving my biggest plant maybe 2.5 inches and a little 2 week old seedling that's close to the ground like not even a inch, what is that?. Any ways my point is that I couldn't risk a other coon raid so I made a choice to transplant them from pot to ground. I live in Florida, we've been getting hit by the tropical storm debbie,hard rains and windy weathers been hitting did a check up on them today and they looking good!!
Did they dig up your soil or just str8 up eat the plant? A deer or something would just eat it like that but a skunk/racoon/possum/groundhog/pig would dig the soil up for the smelly blood meal
Damn if it wasn't blood meal it could just be the soil in general somehow.. either way it sounds like they weren't really aiming for the plant. Hope you can still pull through. Do any of the following to help prevent now or in the future. -put up fishing line or floss around trees to freak animals out and they will run away. -put urine down the best would be predator urine -hair -fencing -i haven't seen this around but i like to put a huge fallen tree around them also for protection.
Haha, in the case of the tree its most important for shape.. Kinda prong like so it can protect close to bud level.