He arrived promptly at the arranged time with his wife, who is doing some of the work with him. We chatted as he removed bits of piano to get to the strings. He asked if I’d noticed any particular problems with any of the notes. I said Middle C had sunk a bit but apart from that the other notes seemed to be ok. He said he’d have a look at it. He took off another piano ‘bit’ and gently lifted out the Middle C key. “Ah,” he said, “there’s your problem!” In the space where the key had been was some fluff – the kind of thing you might find in a vacuum cleaner bag.
“It looks like you’ve had some mice!” he said. Looking further he located some damage by moths as well. He told us that once the mice get in the moths tend to come too. We had a couple of mice in the house earlier in the year. They usually come in at the back of the stove so we’d caught a couple in the traps we’d laid there. We hadn’t noticed any in the vicinity of the piano though.
The attack by moths was surprising in that we always have naphthalene moth balls in the piano. Our tuner suggested we place some actually underneath the keys as well as hang some just inside the lid.
Needless to say there is now a lot of work to be done on the bushes on the keys themselves and also on the piano. Take a look at the photos below, you’ll see what I mean!
The moth damage
Mice damage. This is where most of the fluff (nest) was.
Rust caused by mice urine! (Who would have thought!!)
Our piano as it looks now, minus all the keys.
I will be very glad to get the piano back to it’s normal playing self. It’s amazing how many times I’ve gone to sit down and then remembered: Oops, we don’t have any keys!
