Rodents

[John Musselwhite]

>box and put on rubber gloves to lift out all the debris that was under the
>keys.  When we got to the middle of the piano, not only was there a nest, but
>a complete, intact mouse skeleton under the keys.

When I was a kid I'd go with my Dad out to Drumheller (The Badlands... LOTS
of dinosaur bones in those days!) and that area and spent a few days doing
school pianos. I got to clean the pianos and many of the mice I found were
mummified rather than reduced to skeletons. I guess it's the dry air here. I
didn't save any of them either... BTW, they look like a little T-Rex in that
condition, which I thought was fitting for pianos in the badlands.

That's when I began my coin collection as well... that was back in the
fifties and there were some interesting things in those pianos!

I find what's left of mice all the time here... sometimes under the keys of
lovely pianos which have been in someone's well-kept house for years. It
doesn't make them very happy when they find what they've been living with
all these years!

>We just smile in these situations and act like it's perfectly normal, right?

Isn't it?  B-})

>At least that little critter didn't do much damage to the actual piano ...
>such as it was.

You were lucky!  We find them so badly stained with urine and feces that
usually you don't even want to touch them to tune them. When they're that
bad I inform the customer and we have to discuss how to proceed. Even if
it's cleaned up all the springs, felts and bushings as well as the softer
woods like the keys are so badly damaged it often isn't worth fixing.

>I'm kinda sorry now that I didn't keep the skeleton.  It would have made an
>unusual addition to my bookcase, or a good start to a science project for a
>kid.

The last mouse nest I found in a piano was empty, but the kid saved it
intact for a school project...  I don't know if he ever went through with it
or his Mom made him throw it out.

                John
John Musselwhite, RPT
Calgary, Alberta Canada
musselj@cadvision.com