What's eating my indoor cactus?

[allygracebz]

Yesterday I had a beautiful, round offshoot. Today I came home from work to this mess. There are no other signs of damage to this cactus or the others. No webbing or visible critters. Inside cactus, so no rodents or slugs could have gotten to it. Help??

Background: This cactus is about 10 inches tall and grouped in a large pot with 2 other cacti of the same kind. It has had damage in the past likely caused my underwatering, which left me to cut the top, damaged part and let it callous over. An offshoot has been steadily growing from the calloused top for several weeks. The cactus sits inside near a large window and gets lots of sun. I occasionally bring it outside in the summer months, but it has not been outside in a number of months.

TIA

[hegar]

Judging by the size of the damage and the short time it took to appear, there are not many invertebrates that could achieve this, except for perhaps the Giant African Snail, or a number of cockroaches. Otherwise, the only other candidates would be small rodents (mice, rats), perhaps some birds, or larger animals like rabbits. etc.. Do you have an indoor pet? It looks like whatever did this was either tall enough to reach the offset or able to fly.
Either way, it seems like there is definitely something in your house that caused this kind of destruction.
Did the damage happen during the nighttime hours or during daytime?
I hope, that whatever did this will not continue its destructive ways and leave the rest of your cactus alone.

Harald

P.S.: By the way, some animal pests are able to enter a house through openings, that people would think are too small.