…But not with a years-old dead mouse in it. At least, that’s what the piano tuner today led me to believe.

We invited a piano tuner, recommended by Beck’s previous tuner, to our home to tune Mom’s piano, basically so we could sell the Roland digital keyboard we bought a couple of years ago. I’d rather be playing a “real” piano, despite the wonderful feel and sound of the Roland. I guess one could argue that the Roland is superior — never needs tuning, always sounds the same. However, there’s something…. magical… about playing a real piano, and I’m all about the sense or feel of something. It all has to be just so.

Well, the tuner walks in, sets up her gear, and begins to take the panels off the piano, and there, in the bottom, is a long-dead mouse, resting on a card. Now, Mom had told me for years that she believed there was a mouse in there, as her cats had always taken peculiar interest in the piano. With the cats not being musically inclined, the obvious answer was a mouse.

I thought our piano tuner was gonna just hightail it out of the house when the mouse was discovered. She was not a happy camper! I extricated it from the piano, Beck vacuumed up the leftovers from its stay in Hotel Wurlitzer, and the tuner began her work. Two hours of it sounding like a passle of cats were alive and well inside the piano, and she finished.

I’ve got to say that the piano sounds wonderful, and feels better than it ever did. A fitting tribute, I think. Dad gave this piano to Mom just before she was diagnosed with CML, and she only just began to play before the illness sapped her strength for so long before coming under control. Now, my dream of playing can continue, and on the instrument that meant so much, given from Dad to Mom.