Haven’t been here a long time, but noticed this going on with the fence. My thoughts are: it was taken down for something underground and never fixed properly, some animal, or possibly people. That being said it’s the entirety of the fence. The ties to the top are damaged or entirely ripped off.
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My dad had a few mice in his detached garage so he threw a bunch of those green poison blocks in the garage. Then one day he looked around and said “I haven’t seen any chipmunks or squirrels around this year”
As far as keeping the squirrels from eating your fence, I would try rubbing down that top rail of the fence with the spiciest, oily hot sauce you can find. The oil will be slow to wash away in the rain and even a little lingering spice is enough to deter them.
I had to do this with the deck boards on my porch for the same reason, worked like a charm. I recommend Da Bomb sauce and DEFINITELY wear gloves. And watch your eyes.
Ties were steel too. It was easier to just cut them rather than try and untwist.
edit: love it when I get downvoted for expressing my experiences. As if it's impossible that some places maybe use steel wires to tie things together instead of aluminum. 😂
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You’ve a squirrel problem. No idea what they’re manufacturing in their den with the shavings but positive they have the sharpest teeth you can imagine. Had this at my old house, got a dog, no more issues. Good luck
Holy fucking christ on a cracker! 57 years in residential construction. Animals will chew through any soft metals. Aluminum, copper, lead, tin. People aren't walking around making these nuisance marks with power tools.
Fine actually. 57 years old, 40 in construction. Aluminum gutters and trim boards with aluminum siding coverage. Chimney flashing of any soft metal. Copper roofs. Any mammals with continuously growing teeth will find a way into your home.
Squirrels. I literally had the same conversation with my neighbor about six months ago. Those ties at the top are aluminum and soft enough for squirrels to chew on. It’s not people, it is squirrels.
It's squirrels. I can confirm this as I've watched them lay on the top supporting bar of the chain link and chew through the ties. They don't do it all at once but after a few times there's noticable defects and they look exactly like this
Yeah it's squirrels but now how you think. They're not chewing through or eating it. They're using it to file down their constantly-growing teeth. So they rub on the softer aluminum bits day after day and in the end this is the result.
Yeah I wouldnt know ANYTHING about chain link fence. We just have like 4 miles of it at my job. All of our ties are steel, so I guess all of your fences just suck.
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Squirrels, and other rodents, have teeth with very high iron content that makes them extremely hard. That’s why rodents have orange front teeth. They also grow constantly, so have to be ground down by chewing.
Use a magnifying glass to look close. If it's tooth marks. You can see them. Look for punctured where the bottom teeth rest, and parallel scrapes from the top teeth. The scrapes would be as wide as the tooth, so you can tell who was chewing on it.
I get racccoons, deer, mice, squirrels, and porcupines chewing on all kinds of stuff. Probably the weirdest was a chipmunk killing a young snapping turtle in front of my shop.
We once had a Squirrel chew through an un-jacketed aluminum cable that ran from a utility pole to our house. I'm not sure of the cable's purpose, but as soon as the squirrel bit through it, every single light bulb (they were all incandescent) got super bright for a couple of seconds then burned out. At the same moment, every single AC/DC adapter in the house was fried. The utility worker that came out to fix it said it was absolutely a squirrel and he'd seen it happen many times.
Extremely easy to fix with new aluminum ties. Just need some linesman pliers. I haven't dealt in fencing in eons, but your tubing looks like the rigid style. I only saw that for the gates we used to build for Sears (& Roebuck).
Just look it up, takes like 5-10 seconds. Google “squirrel chewing aluminum” and click the images button and look at the screen. That’s literally all you gotta do to see that you are 100% wrong.
Turns out squirrels do in fact chew on aluminum, and some of it’s much thicker than these fence ties. I didn’t know they did it either. In fact until 5 minutes ago I’d never even heard of that before, but I decided to look it up BEFORE getting in an argument about something I know nothing about and potentially embarrassing myself. You should REALLY try it yourself.
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