What’s living in your piano? Does it smell?

Here’s a slightly off-putting story if you’ve not been taking care of your acoustic piano.

Have you allowed rodents or birds to make their final home in your cosy felt-lined instrument?

Even after about 60 years of piano tuning, Richard C. Kreitz, 82, of Shillington still dreads the phone calls with a voice on the other end of the line that says: “My piano smells terrible. It’s making me sick to my stomach.â€?

Not being a music critic, Kreitz declines to blame the pianist for the odor.

So he usually inspects stinky pianos to find a dead mouse or bird or some other tiny creature that, before death, discovered cozy piano innards make the nicest of homes because they are finely furnished with felt, hammers, strings and shiny brass or metal pieces.

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It’d be unusual to find such things with electronic keyboards, unless someone has been particularly messy with food and it’s become infested with very tiny insects. Euch.

Quite apart from reading about the interesting things he finds inside pianos, it’s an interesting look at the life of a highly experienced piano tuner.

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