We live in Palos Verdes (suburban Los Angeles) and have some mysterious
animal pulling freshly planted, small tomato plants out of the ground at
night. It is not eating the plants, but for some reason, pulls them out of
the ground and leaves them there.

Being that it is nocturnal, I could guess at an opossum or a raccoon, but I
have no idea why it would pull plants. I thought maybe an opossum looking
for snails, but it keeps returning and pulling out the same plants about
every other night.

We put bird netting over them, but it apparently got under the netting and
pulled them out again last night.

Any ideas of what strange beast we have lurking here at night?