Why do squirrels chew lead

One of the main questions we get are why do squirrels chew on lead? Its a great question, and since nobody speaks squirrel, nobody knows for sure. One idea is since they are rodents, their teeth are constantly growing and need to be worn down. Chewing lead will do this. The second idea is that it tastes good. This is true, lead has a sweet taste. This is why children would chew lead based paint, which caused all kinds of problems in the past. Interestingly it doesn’t usually kill them. Lead has to be soluble to be absorbed into the blood stream, and this isn’t. It just passes thru them,