We’re still not having in-person services at my church job, Nu‘uanu Congregational Church, but since restrictions in Hawaii are loosening, I thought I’d better get the organ checked out since I last played it on the first Sunday in August.
Everything seemed to be okay when I played on the Great, with the Swell manual coupled in, but when I tried to play a solo on the Swell, I soon discovered that the top two octaves were absolutely silent. No matter what stop I pulled out, there was no sound as soon as I tried to play any notes higher than an octave above middle C. As I told the church office, I could work around this, if necessary, but they called Bob Alder, the organ technician anyway.
Bob and his assistant, Jude Oliver, came over from the Big Island, and had this report:
Jude and I got the Nuuanu organ fixed today. Did a temporary fix for the Great G-2 that was sticking up and clacking. That organ is showing its age.
It’s also had a rodent inside.
The story that immediately came to mind was one which I included for the article I’m sending to In Tempo, the quarterly publication of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians.
None of my stories, however, comes close to the experience my friend, John McCreary, had when President Ronald Reagan came to visit. Metal detectors were stationed at the Cathedral doors and the presence of the Secret Service put everyone on edge. During the sermon, John heard a rustling noise coming from the organ bench, then jumped backwards onto the pedals when he spied a large rat inside! To his dismay, some 32’ stops were drawn, creating a large noise, to which the Dean quipped, “The voice of God!”
Hey, you know we in Hawaii are not the only ones with rats in the organ!
I found these stories on The Organ Forum: “Why do rodents just love organs?“
In just about any post involving repairs to electronic organs and even sometimes pump organs the conversation invariably involves the incidence of rodent infestation—with the associated damage these squeaky, furry little pests can do. I am quite convinced it is not because they like organ music or electronic or any other organ insides, although do they seem to like the taste of wooden edges, plastic and other wire coatings, even sometimes the edges of paper capacitors and especially the electronic pc boards which make excellent toilets. Why is it only rodents that do this damage? I have once owned a Hewlett Packard printer which became the home for a colony of small black ants but a little squirt of DOOM and they were gone, leaving no damage behind. And I have not seen a piano or other instrument infested and damaged by rodents, although there may be such cases as well.
The fact of the rodent matter is that they can render a beautiful instrument totally useless or at best with extensive repair bills after their fling inside an organ. A case in point is that old Gulbransen Pacemaker I hauled across the length of the country only to find that rats have been at the insides, both the two- and four legged variety so that I will likely end up discarding all the insides and using only the cabinet X-(. (Organfella)
My hypothesis is that the flute sounds draw them in like the pied piper. In other cases it is because the organ is cheesy. (Twiggybush)
I like Twiggy’s theory! Could also be the relative seclusion of the spaces inside, where the owner rarely if ever opens it up to disturb their domestic tranquility. And the warmth of the electronic parts in cold weather, along with the availability of the rubber, cloth, wood, and other stuff they can chew up for nesting and/or food. A rodent heaven!
BTW, pianos can also attract them and be ruined by them. I’ve opened up many a piano out in a rural area, in some remote little church in the middle of a cotton field, to discover a massive nest of mice, and often to sadly discover that they’ve eaten some of the felt off the hammer heads or dampers or other accessible parts. (Jbird604)
It’s not just organs. Rodents tend to love any secluded place with electronics. In my day job I’m an electronics service technician. Just a couple weeks ago I had a service call at a McDonalds that was complaining of a loud buzz on their drive thru headsets. Traced the problem to a junction box where a mouse had set up housekeeping. The little critter had encased the audio cable in nesting material and crewed through the jacket, shorting one side of the balanced line to ground (or earth, for our European friends). Unfortunately for the mouse, it had also done the same to some high voltage wires and was found unresponsive in the bottom of the box. (Toomanytoyz)
Why do rodents just love organs? Maybe because a lot of them have a rat’s nest of wiring. (W4KSR)
A couple of years ago I had mice get into my Allen theatre organ and chew up some of the key contact wiring. I replaced the bad wires and then carefully sprinkled hot pepper around the keyboards inside the console. So far, I haven’t had any more problems in the console with mice. (Ken in Texas)
Funny! But not so funny. I grew up with bats, First Presbyterian, Huntsville, AL. It’s one thing to have them in the pipes encasement; it’s another to have them flying around while you’re practicing.
I cannot imagine anything more terrifying than to have bats flying around! Yecch!
It reminds me, of course, of the probably apocryphal story about the mouse that chewed the winding tube in the organ in St. Nicholas church of Oberndorf, rendering the organ inoperable, resulting in the creation and first performance of “Stille nacht.” If true, who wouldn’t love a mouse in the organ?
During the November 2020 ice storm in Oklahoma, a family of three raccoons managed to get into the classroom area ceilings via a loose eave vent. At that time, due to COVID (and ice covered roads), nobody was at the church during the week, so they had the building to themselves. After tearing up a few panels in the suspended ceilings, they found their way into the nave, and into the choir loft. They got into the organ console via the expression pedal opening, and chewed a few wires; but left after finding no food. They also left a sizeable “gift” at the top of the stair, but thank goodness I saw it before stepping in it. The raccoons were too big to get into the upper portion of the console, so the really complex wiring was untouched… so, after only one Sunday played from the digital keyboard, John Riester was able to rewire a few relays and replace the main power cable, and we had our pipe organ working again. The eave vents and ceilings have been repaired, and the three large raccoons professionally relocated, but now it’s a rule that the door between the classroom wing and the nave shall remain closed when the church is not occupied!