Skunks ripped up 18 cuke plants last night.
I hate when they do that.
Tried to re-plant
Good thing I always plant massive amounts.

Forget putting bone meal in any hole for any plant variety.
I have to replant 100% the next morning.

How do you know it was skunks?

Thankfully, no skunks on my grounds. Armadillos are bad enough, but they seldom did vigorously enough in the garden to uproot anything but the tiniest of seedlings.

One episode years ago I dug the holes for the plants and put bonemeal in,then let things sit for a few days for the striped ones to do their thing.
Then I planted once no more activity in the holes.

I never use bone or blood meal for this reason. skunks dig it up every time. One year I found my tomato seedlings ripped out and laying on the ground the day after I planted them with some fertilizer in the hole. I forget what I had used but now if I use anything, it is feather meal which is 12-0-0. My soil test shows an excess of P and K so additional is not needed. Skunks have not dug up my feather meal.

I didn't use bone meal,but there must have been something in the potting mix that made them dig down to china.
They left the tomato plants alone that I planted weeks ago.

I think that they go after other fertilizers besides bone meal. One year I bought some of those fertilizer spikes that you drive down into the ground to feed trees. They dug them up and ate them!

I think you nailed it.
I used the spikes in a container then recycled the soil for the cukes.

must be a young skunk.
The old ones suffer from incontinence and drip when they walk not threatened at all.
I can't tell it was around til I see plants out of their ground sockets.

The heat/drought is causing significant shrinkage on the surviving cukes.
They are puny and curling up like a horseshoe.
At least they are not bitter yet.