I had a customer with a couple of woodchucks chewing on her garage door frame last week. Woodchucks and rabbits seem like the most frequent diners at the garage door buffet. Occasionally I'll get a raccoon, but the two new members of the diner's club appear to be red squirrels and chipmunks.

I can understand that there are probably salt deposits on the frame but I get a lot of chewing on the garage door itself. I can't imagine that there is much salt on the door. What's that all about?

Many times I think it is the air flow/odor flow from in to out detected at the ground level flowing under the door. Animals are quite perceptive of this and attempt to make entry. Mice chew the rubber bottom corners off of the doors for the same reason.

Other times there is a homosote expansion strip at the concrete pour jointure that has many properties that animals love to chew at. If they cant get at it easily they chew on the wood instead or the trim edges.

I've rarely had porcupine chew tires on cars before where dogs have peed on them. As for the squirrels...Maybe they know that bird seed is stored in there so they figure they'll test out the durability of the door?

Paul:
I find each and everyone of these chewing cases occurs in one of the
following areas:

1)attracted to food (grain base)

2)attracted to salt

3)attracted to soybeans

4)chewing because of incisor growth

pick65

#5) Customer leaves garage door open, raccoon enters garage, customer comes home shuts garage door.

All of the chewing that I am talking about in this post came from the outside, with the garage door closed, and the chewing was pretty close to the height of the animal.

I was going nuts and put up a trail cam that caught the red squirrel and the chipmunks having breakfast on the door jams.

And Bob, I'm really getting tired of those mouse chewed rubber corners on MY garage door. They have plenty of bait boxes around the house but the garage door seems to be the big attraction. In fifteen years I have never seen a mouse in my garage. I figure they get that crappy taste of rubber in their mouths and then go around the corner and try to get rid of the taste by eating the yummy Contrac Blox.