Obiter thought dealing with an unwanted squirrel in the kitchen a few weeks ago was dramatic but it’s nothing compared to Suffolk Law Centre solicitor Pippa Banham’s efforts to remove a polecat that got stuck inside her piano.

Polecat

Pippa Banham had to deal with an unexpected furry guest

Banham said she heard a scrabbling noise and one of her dogs started sniffing around the piano where the wild mammal was hiding.

Banham tried to move the upright piano but the pesky polecat decided to hide inside it. Not knowing what to do, Banham woke her daughter to help. As Banham lifted the piano, her daughter – sporting heavy duty gardening gloves, wellies and a face mask (polecats are nippy and smelly) – used her brother’s crutches (he had broken his leg) to coax the beast out.

‘It came out and she just grabbed it,’ Banham said. Her daughter put the musical mustelid in an animal travel cage in the garden. ‘It twisted itself sideways, slipped straight through and [disappeared] into the countryside,’ said Banham, who lives out in the sticks.

There is an even happier ending. As Banham was taking the piano apart, she discovered a box containing pearl earrings which she lost in 2013.

‘The polecat, the piano and the pearl earrings – it sounds like an Agatha Christie story,’ she said. Sounds like a bestseller to us.

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