We're not in Eden anymore

To preface...remember our garden last year?? It was going awesome until the heat, the bugs, the weeds, the watering woes, the disease....
After that experience we decided to try square foot gardening. It's supposed to be perfect for people with little space, little time...and the soil is full of nutrients...blah, blah blah. Let me just say, we're obviously not in Eden anymore.
Our SFG started out awesome (do you notice a trend already?) We were really excited and everything was going great. Then there were bugs. No big deal, just dust a little Seven Dust. Then there was the heat. and the disease. and more heat.
We wound up pulling most of our plants out due to disease and other natural causes of death.
BUT there was still hope. The tomatoes were doing great. The cucumbers were at least producing, and the bell peppers still had TONS of peppers budding and growing.
Tonight while I was watering I noticed something a little (or should I say BIG) odd.

These enormous balls of poop. Obvious sign of a LARGE bug. And, the dirt all around my plant was shuffled in an odd way. Not an Everett way, but a BUG way. So I started looking for other clues.

Then I saw THIS!

For all you people who get to garden in NORMAL (or as I'd like to call EDEN) climates, this is a horn worm. A VERY HEALTHY horn worm! And he's eating my bell pepper!!
Erick is out of town, so I had to be brave and attack aka remove that huge, ugly, nasty, scary bug all by myself. YUCK.
All I can say is bring on the seven dust. And to all you people who don't have such terrible gardening woes, I'm so jealous.