Guess who lives at my house? The Very Hungry Caterpillar…Caterpillars. I will hazard an educated guess that the culprits are Silvery Checkerspot cats, and while it looks like they’ll kill the coneflowers, they won’t. The foliage will recover, and the flowers will bloom to produce nectar for the adults to do this again next year. When humans don’t fuck it up, nature knows exactly what it’s doing.