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After carnival I usually find a lot of confetti in my sousaphone.
I use a net over the bell to prevent that things are thrown into the bell at parades. One year I lost that net – and I found it in my sousaphone, when washed it.

My H.S. orchestra performed at the local Tree Lighting every year downtown. One year I remember hearing a loud clanking sound but didn't think anything of it at the time (just sorta sounded like something happened behind me). When I got home I took the tuba out to practice and heard something rolling around. One of the ornaments from the tree had fallen into the bell.

I bought an old conn 38k(no valves) ,upon taking the valve caps off all 3 of the springs had a mouse skeletons in them.Looks like they served as mouse traps legs and tail stuck through the spring.

Wow! The mouse story is tough to beat.

Back in the day, when I was a grad student at Emporia State, I also played in the marching band. The school's sousaphones were stored, out in the open, on the 3rd floor of the music building. For the first couple of weeks of using one of the sousaphones, I detected an unpleasant smell coming through the mouthpiece. I could almost "taste" that smell. When I finally had a chance, I gave the horn a bath. When I did, much to my surprise, out fell a bird carcass. At least in those days, there was no air conditioning, and sometimes windows would be open. Occasionally, a bird would fly into the building, and might have some trouble finding its way back out. Apparently, one of them found a dead end inside the sousaphone.

No dead animals, but my tech flushed a sock out of a sousaphone I sent in for repairs.

Flushing a high school sousaphone and a bag of weed came out of it. I've seen the rats and such, but never have I had to call the teacher, police, and principal over a repair before.

A small alarm clock in my concert tuba. It was playing "weird" for a few months. Finally, I took it to get looked at. Harley Tartarsky, the gentleman who fixed it, was having trouble telling me what was wrong because he was laughing so hard at me. We had a concert band concert that night, and during the warm-ups, the director kept giving me "the hand," because now that my horn wasn't stuffy, playing like I had been playing was about twice as loud. The small alarm clock was in my horn because I was late leaving my hotel room so I kind of just threw everything where it would go , and somehow my alarm clock, which I thought I'd left in the hotel room, ended up down my horn.

I was also privy to a story told by my teacher. He was teaching a high school band camp and it ended up that one of the sousaphone players had a tennis shoe stuck down the bell of his fiberglass sousaphone.

In a 3rd story I was told, A very famous euphonium player was about to play a concert and he was almost in tears because he was sounding horrible the entire weekend of the conference he was attending. Someone offered to look at his horn, and out came one of those large, rectangular pencil erasers. He sounded great on the concert...

In junior high, we took our sousaphones home for Christmas break. One of my fellow tuba section guys came back with the god-awfullest smell emanating from his horn.

Turned out, while the horn was laying on the floor at home, a rat had crawled down the bell, round and round, where it stops nobody knows, got stuck and perished.

Some drunk started playing a variation of "Dunk" throwing beer cups at my bell from the dance floor at Wurstfest many years ago. He won a prize of sorts, free ride and overnight accommodations at the Graybar Hotel.

JALLEN wrote: Turned out, while the horn was laying on the floor at home, a rat had crawled down the bell, round and round, where it stops nobody knows, got stuck and perished.

I had a Starling get caught in a tuba I used to own in a similar manner. It was... disgusting.

A few years back, I went to Dillon's and tried out a *beautiful* new goldbrass Miraphone 188. Looked SO pretty, so it must sound like...

...total crap? SO stuffy, SO much resistance, SO... awful.

On a whim, I decided to give it a spin, and out fall 4 styrofoam packing peanuts. (I think it was just unpacked that morning.) I tried the tuba again, and it was one of the most fantastic I had ever tried.

Not exactly a rat or a starling, but ya know, tubas are *supposed* to play well. If it doesn't play well, something IS wrong.

Back when I had my high school graduation party, my dad wanted me to show off my tuba playing skills for everyone. As I started playing, I noticed that my niece was trying to throw something into my bell... Later when I gave my tuba a bath, I found out what it was. I found several pieces of cheese (now moldy) and some cards to a board game in there.

tstryk wrote:The only reason I played tuba instead of something smaller is that it was impossible to smuggle a quart of rum into football games in the bell of anything else!

The strangest thing I ever found was a quart of rum.

A 16 pound steel shotput.

My friend was taught by the first chair tuba player, who only knew 7 fingerings. Yep - A was 2nd valve, Ab was 2nd valve, A# was 2nd valve. He was blowing his face off trying to get some sound out of the horn and lipping everything up and down for the accidentals. When his dad flushed out the sousaphone out rolled this shotput.

Needless to say the horn was a lot lighter and he could bury everyone on the field with the amount of sound he was then putting out.

Roger

Mark Messing.

Freshman year of high school I played a big bell forward 3 banger that was kept in a stand in the back of the band room. I soon learned to give it a couple spins before each rehearsal. I found: fruit, paper wads (many), coins, empty and full lunch bags, text book, women's handbag, piece of wood, rubber foot off chair, used gum, pen, cracked reed and dead flys.

Played in a community college band as an adult for awhile. Grabbed my horn and rushed to rehearsal, tossed in the mouthpiece and blew a good blast to start warm up. Heard a metallic clang and rattle go trucking through the horn. Discovered that my 2 year old son had shoved a paper fastener in the lead pipe. Same routine the next week, and discovered that my first valve was stuck because there was a pen cap in it. Took 10 minutes to get it out. I put a cap-plug in the receiver after that when the horn wasn't in use.

Borrowed a 3/4 horn from the local high school to play in my college pep band. Sounded stuffy, even for a 3/4, and the G and F# at the bottom of the staff were way off. Did a flush back at the dorm and found a 2" soft rubber ball that had been in there long enough for part of it to rot away where the water collected behind it. I wonder how many kids quit because the band teacher told them they sounded awful?

A euphonium player showed up for a middle school concert freaking out because his little **** brother didn't like his practicing and chucked a golf ball down the bell hard enough to go around the bend and stick. Our band teacher got the hose hooked up on the janitor's sink, slipped it onto the pipe past the main slide, and blew out the ball. Concert saved!

My own little **** brother set his tuba bell-down on the floor so as to completely cover and hide a clarinet on a floor stand. Caused quite a panic for a few minutes right before another middle school concert.

Never found a croaked critter yet, but I do keep my horns in the basement where mice have been known to roam. I guess I'll keep the cases shut.

Keys to a 63 Chevy. Granted they were my keys, but they had been lost for three months. you have to love when your little niece gets a hold of your keys and hides them.

Back in 2006 I bought a silver Conn 20K on eBay. I shined that horn up and went to play it after giving it a bath and full cleaning only to find it was stuffy. I stuck a computer "webcam" in to it to try and figure it out. After buying a plumbing snake I just gave up and took it into a repair tech. I came back a couple days later to pick it up and there was a glass, "Patio" cola bottle next to it, that was lodged inside. After researching the dates, Patio cola was the precursor to Diet Pepsi in 1960-62. The Sousa was from 1946 and its great condition lent its self to being clogged with a bottle in 1962. I still have the bottle but I sold the 20K.

Northernlb wrote:I have found a lot over the years but the weirdest was a balled up piece of music someone had lit on fire and thrown into the horn.

Perhaps it was burnt from a tech making a repair? What was the title of the piece?

Some of these tuba screens might be a good investment for the MS/HS band director:

http://www.wwbw.com/Ferree-s-Tools-Sous ... 39418.wwbw" target="_blank

I found parts and pieces to a clarinet and bari sax once (specifically barrel, 1st clarinet joint and bari mp) in a high school sousaphone when I was student teaching but the rat, mice, and bird stories win hands down.