I planted a sweet orange bell pepper plant last week in my garden bed, which was converted from a fire pit. It's only half a foot tall and hasn't flowered yet. One day, an entire leaf was chewed off. On the next day, almost all the leaves were chewed off.
The neighboring tomato plant and strawberry plants are untouched. I looked for worms but didn't find any. Last week, I did kill a white caterpillar shaped worm though. Today, I did squash some slugs that I found on my strawberry plants, but they didn't seem to be doing major damage to those plants.
Yesterday, I saw a squirrel gnaw on the leaves of dandelions. Last year, I noticed that the squirrels were fond of weeds, but they never touched my real plants. Could they have changed their attack plan this year?
Update April 12, 2015
This morning, I discovered that the last leaf of the orange bell pepper was chewed off. Also, my Sugar Baby Icebox Watermelon seedlings were also attacked in a similar manner. I had neatly piled cedar mulch around the watermelon. I see that the mulch was disheveled and the soil was indented. An insect would not be able to move mulch around like that. It must be the squirrel by process of elimination.