Rewilding My Lot

I have a Spineless Prickly Pear (Opuntia ellisiana) cactus that was planted last year. It’s still small, just one horizonal pad on the ground and two vertical pads that have grown from it.

About three weeks ago I noticed fresh nibble marks had appeared overnight in the pad that lies on the ground. I couldn’t tell from the bite marks what might have done this, but guessed that it would be small, given that the vertical pads were untouched.

A couple of nights later, there were more bite marks (between the original ones and the blackened part of the pad).

I thought the most likely reason for eating prickly pear would be to get moisture. However, just feet away is a pond. So whatever it was didn’t want to, or couldn’t, drink from the pond. That also might suggest something small since the pond doesn’t have good shallow entry points (yet).

Potential candidate nibblers I thought might include:

• small mammal, perhaps rodent
• slug or snail
• lizard
• insect

The bite marks only appeared on two separate nights, the last time being three weeks ago. They don’t seem enough to damage the plant significantly, so given that I don’t have any clear evidence of what’s going on, I decided not to worry about it for now.

In contrast to the destruction at the bottom end of the Spineless Prickly Pear, there are now at least five new growths at the top end. Given the youth of my plant and the time of year, they are more likely to be new pads rather than fruits (to be confirmed when they’re bigger). So this is an encouraging sign that the plant is settling in well.