my poor aloe vera plant

It started out as a cutting/offshoot that a co-worker gave me. It grew too big for the pot I planted it in, but I didn't transplant it. Now most of the green parts of the plant are outside of the pot, and the pot itself is full of the roots.

It's so hardy; survives inside the house on hardly any attention and little water. Even the shoots that come loose stay green and thick for a long long time before drying out.

But today the plant looks ill and near death. On closer inspection, it looks like some critter has been eating chunks out of it! There are also small black droppings, ranging from tiny to about the size of a small poppy seed. Some of the droppings are on the edges of the aloe blades, indicating the critter was small enough to crawl along the blades. What kind of critter could that be?

They seem too small to be roach droppings, but that's the only thing I can think of, besides spiders. Would spiders eat an aloe vera plant?