That's what I was Thinking
@WildBill .....we are over run with rabbits ATM....I've even noticed them putting barrier fences on full fields...which is unusual.........
I really didn't have problems with rabbits that much or other small animals. The problems I had were with deer and Coyotes......... Yep, coyotes in the garden.
With all the cats that I had, Rabbits didn't hang around much. The cats did patrol the garden pretty well!
Deer meant that an electric fence was necessary. I wrapped strips of aluminum foil on the wire to attract their attention. Dear are attracted to sweet feed, so I smeared molasses on the strips.
They did stay away after that. But, that was after they devastated my Whippoorwill peas................ Just as they ripened.
Now to the Coyotes. Now I had never heard of Coyotes doing this before it happened! The cultivar that was planted was a yellow meat thin rind melon. The thin rind meant that it wasn't really all that good for commercial with transportation. Extremely sweet and flavorful for the home gardener. Just as they were ripening, I found large holes in the center of them With quite a bit of the meat eaten. I'm thinking deer, but all I see are coyote tracks. I have my neighbor come down and take a look at it. He was raised right there and lived there most of his life with family gardening, Cash crops and raising cattle. He had never seen anything like it before . He did come to the same conclusion I did that Coyotes were the cause.
It still didn't make much sense to me. So I took my gaming camera and hung it on one of T posts overlooking some fine watermelon. It showed them pouncing on the watermelon in the center with their front paws! The only thing that I can figure out how they learned to do this was that they came upon deer had done the same thing. Now, I have seen deer kick various fruits to bust them open to eat........ cantaloupes for one.
It would have been ok as an acceptable loss if they would just eat the whole melon. Ohh no they couldn't do that! They would bust up a watermelon and only eat a small part out of the center before they went to another one!
A couple of nights staking out The garden with my crappy first gen Russian Night scope on my old M14, that group wasn't much of a problem ever again.