Rodents

[John Musselwhite]

>at home the whole time!)  Before jumping in to tune and/or clean out a piano
>that has obvious rodent damage, make sure you are protected as best you can.
>Rubber gloves can be a pretty smart precaution.

If I recall there was an article in the Journal a while back about the
precautions you should take when working with potential mouse hazards.
Where's an index when you need it!

I keep rubber gloves, surgical masks, a special apron, plastic bags to
dispose of the large stuff, spare bags and filters for my little vacuum and
lysol spray in a separate cleaning kit". I spray the vacuum's bag and filter
too, although I don't know how much good that does.

One problem we face here is deer mice, which can carry the "hanta virus".
This is NOT something you want to take any chances with.

While most of the mouse problems I see are old rather than recent I would
imagine the bacteria and viruses would still be a problem regardless of how
long the refuse has been in there. Does anyone know if there is a time limit
on this sort of thing? Would the dry air here eventually kill the worst of
it off? Am I being over-cautious?

As an aside, I tuned a beautiful old Bell piano the other day that had a
mouse-hole chewed right through the bottom! Fortunately, the inside of the
piano appeared to be OK with no nests or mouse by-product damage inside.
Either the owner caught the infestation in time or the mice just didn't like
that piano! I'll have more to say about the Bell later (since it's January
and not too busy!) but I thought the mouse-hole was interesting. At least, I
assume it was a mouse hole as there are a limited number of things that
could do that sort of damage.

                John

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