How many green tomatoes could a woodchuck chomp?

.......if a woodchuck could chomp tomatoes??

I live in a semi-rural area and have been blessed to interact with multitudes of wildlife. I also have a perennial garden and a small vegetable garden and need to protect them from those creatures. It's relatively easy with some small measures; fencing and stinky stuff. Thankfully I found a better anti-deer and rabbit spray this year that smells and tastes strongly of capsaicin and not like someone chucked a dozen eggs under the bushes and left them to rot. Much more pleasant to use. The only casualty so far that I was not prepared for was the large Day Lily bud that some naughty creature ate the day before it opened. Sometimes you just have to scream for one exasperative moment and then just let it go. There are good things about seeing wildlife in your yard
Just the other night a fawn took refuge under the Star Magnolia bushes during a rainstorm. Who knows where Mama was and whether or not they ever got reunited, but it was gone several hours later. Last winter we would regularly see up to a dozen deer in our yard, milling about, cavorting and sometimes sleeping under the trees in the snow. This year, I bit the bullet and kept the bird feeders empty and the deer did not come back. This is good, because then mine and the neighbors Hosta gardens do not end up as their personal salad bars.

But today I spotted a new critter, a cute lil' groundhog. It looked like a mutant squirrel with smaller ears and tail, and it waddled around my garden hiding behind the compost cans while I talked to it, asking it's purpose in my yard. Eventually it became tired of my constant inquiries and took off, running behind the echinacea and hollyhocks and out onto the open grass where it eventually disappeared past the neighbors house. Upon intense investigation, all my green tomatoes on the bottom 8 inches of the plants have disappeared. And I mean DISAPPEARED! Not left with teeth marks from a stupid squirrel, or half gone like what a rabbit will do, but completely and totally GONE. No wonder that cute lil' groundhog was waddling. It has just lunched on a sizable meal of organic green tomatoes. Thankfully it isn't a pepper fiend, as I have 6 nice sized peppers just hanging around enjoying the heat. And it ignored the asparagus stems scattered on the ground (for the beneficial nematodes). So guess what I will be doing tonight??? That's right....a fence!