What Is In Your Instrument?

One question I often am asked is, "What type of things do you find stuck in instruments?" Thankfully, I have never found a dead mouse, although my college instructor did. Other than the normal stuff like swabs, cleaners, and pennies, I really have not found too many things. Once I play tested a saxophone after repairing it, and it sounded terrible. I checked it over again and it was in adjustment and the pads all seated fine, so it should have played. After about a half an hour, I finally found the problem... a snowman eraser inside of the neck. On the repair tag I wrote, "Remove snowman from neck" and I taped the eraser to the repair tag. The best, though, was inside a sousaphone. After much work, I managed to dislodge a drumstick, a feathery plume that was supposed to be on top of a marching band hat, and a school newspaper from 1974. Obviously the bell of the sousaphone doubled as a target.

If you can one up me, please tell me I would love to hear it.