I spent a lot of my career working with wood preservatives. I'd sure like to know what that post is treated with! Any idea, tree killer??
While working as Development Manager for a wood protection company, we put out stake tests at a university to test new preservative formulations. Deer ate one of them, but ignored the others. The one they ate had lots of salt in it, but to my knowledge there are no commercial formulations like that because of corrosion problems that would require a stainless steel plant, which is too expensive to be practical.