Guest Post

Guest Chick: Wendall Thomas

We’re so thrilled to have Wendall Thomas visit us today! She’s hilarious in person, she writes hilarious books, and she has an affinity for chicks. Can’t go wrong with any of that.

“I’m Not Sure I Heard Anything After Worm Basket”

I’m figuring this is possibly my only chance to write a piece for the lovely and generous Chicks on the Case – about chicks!

My newest Cyd Redondo mystery, Cheap Trills, is set in Bali in 2007, just as Eat, Pray, Love fever hits the widows and divorcees of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. When her mother books a disastrous trip via a rival travel agent, Cyd rushes to the magical island to save her and winds up a step-mother of sorts herself—in charge of keeping three Bali starling chicks alive. In her purse.

The Bali starling, which Cyd describes as “a snowy, almost arctic white, with a Lone Ranger mask of cobalt blue skin around its black eyes, an Andy Warhol quiff of white hair, and just a tiny hint of black at the end of its tail,” remains one of the most critically endangered creatures on the planet.

bali mynah

In 2007, there were reported to be only seven of the gorgeous birds alive in the wild, so when Cyd witnesses two of that seven being poached from their nest, her instant reaction is to save their babies, having no clue what she is getting herself into.

Even though the book is a screwball comedy, I still wanted to get the details right, so I turned to an expert, the generous Lori Rogalski of the LA Zoo Avian Conservation Center, who’s actually hand-raised two clutches of the chicks at the zoo.

It turns out, the process is about as screwball as it gets. The newborns must have worm larvae and live crickets—with their legs removed—dropped into their mouths every two hours, but the muscles in their neck aren’t developed, so you are always trying to hit a moving target.

Once Cyd has purchased a “worm basket” and dozens of live crickets and made a nest for the chicks with mini panti-liners inside one of her trusty Tupperware containers, she and her mother prepare for their first feeding:

     “Once we were caffeinated, we set up the insect and invertebrate smorgasbord—worm larvae in one coffee cup, and crickets in another. I hadn’t done a great job of containing the crickets, as apparently they could jump higher than I thought. I hoped we’d still have enough. I had no idea how many worm babies or mutilated crickets to feed the chicks, but I figured when they were full they would stop cheeping. I hoped so—I didn’t want to create a starling ‘foie gras’ situation.

     I got out the “nest” and opened the top. Right on cue, they all opened their huge mouths, still half the size of their bodies, and gave a few demanding trills.

     I took a slug of coffee, then moved it away from the feeding cups. “This won’t be too bad,” I said. “First course, larvae?”

     After a few attempts, we each managed to grab a grub, but as soon as we were ready, the birds’ heads would wobble, and the worm would drop into padded bottom of the Tupperware, where it became invisible.

     “We can’t hold their necks still, can we?”

     “We’re not supposed to touch them. We just have to keep trying.”

     Eventually we got a few in, but it wasn’t enough. We were going to have to resort to crickets. I held one up, and looked at Mom. “Help?”

     The only equivalent of trying to hold an angry cricket still while your mother pulls its legs off is probably having your brousins take you, at age ten, to a David Cronenberg triple feature.

     Once it was de-legged, we had to make sure the cricket went longways into the lurching mouths.

     When we finally got one in, you would have thought the Mets had won the World Series. Of course, by the time we’d managed it, all the other crickets had escaped and I had to crawl around on the floor, retrieving them. While doing this, I was able to more accurately determine how far they could jump. About three feet.

     I got up, four hopping crickets in my partially closed fist. “We’re gonna need a bigger mug.”

Got any bird stories, readers?

If you are interested in learning more about the Bali starling, or about the starling reserve on the island of Nusa Penida, which is also featured in Cheap Trills, you can read Lori’s article here:

Beautiful Birds of Bali

Lost Luggage, the first book in Wendall Thomas’s Cyd Redondo series, was a Macavity and Lefty finalist for Best Debut Mystery, Drowned Under received an Anthony nomination for Best Paperback Original and Drowned Under and Fogged Off were Lefty finalists for Best Humorous Mystery. Her short fiction appears in the crime anthologies Ladies Night, Last Resort, Murder-a-Go-Go’s, and Crime Under the Sun. She also teaches in the Graduate Film School at UCLA and lectures internationally on screenwriting. 

You can find Wendall on her website: www.wendallthomas.com

On Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CydRedondoMysteries/

On Twitter/X and Instagram at @ewendallthomas

42 thoughts on “Guest Chick: Wendall Thomas”

  1. WENDALL!! I loved learning more about your chicks here on Chicks on the Case!

    Hmmm, I can share a bird story that happens every spring here in Ottawa, Ontario.

    Springtime is heralded by the return of flocks of Canada Geese. They are very protective of their babies, hissing and even chasing poor souls who come close to the young goslings. A flock of Canada Geese congregate in a downtown Ottawa park where the Ottawa/Rideau Rivers join up. I often see them as I walk on the multi-use pathway (trying to avoid the green goose poop) on my solo walks.

    The geese & goslings have a regular daily cycle when they leave the safety of the park and cross a very busy street to get to the river. Frankly, Ottawa drivers are usually not nice to pedestrians but they do respect the Canada Geese! A long line of cars often come to a stop to allow the family to safely walk across the street!

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    1. Grace! Thanks for the kind words and I have to say, your gosling story has restored my faith in humanity, at least for the morning! It’s lovely to know that, when pressed, people can do the right thing! I am going straight to YouTube to see if there’s any footage of this…

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          1. YAY! But I agree with the woman who recorded the video. Why do they all walk across the street and not fly to the river? I understand they would walk if it was a group of parents and baby goslings…

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          1. Ah yes, I have seen photos of Nēnē before. They do have a good resemblance to our Canada Geese!

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  3. No bird stories here, Wendall. Though a few years back, we did have a red tail hawk who spent a summer perched on the swing set in the back yard regularly. That was a treat!

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    2. JC, your sweet story reminded me of my not-so-sweet hawk story. I was sitting on the lawn in the backyard, taking a break from weeding. A hawk flew over and dropped its dinner—a dead rabbit—RIGHT ON ME! So gross.

      Oh, and when our firstborn was a toddler I was out in the back watching while she toddled. I was marveling at the gorgeous and ginormous owl sitting up high on a pole. Silently and out of nowhere, he swooped down about six inches above my daughter’s head before flying off.

      I guess that’s two stories I have about birds missing out on their dinners!

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        1. Hahaha! Sorry about that, Becky! Although those are both pretty great stories, as bird stories go! Thanks so much for having me. xxx Wendall

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      3. Yikes–how scary (that second story). When we lived in Fairbanks, Alaska for four months, I lived in dread that a bald eagle with swoop down and carry off our little Jack Russell pup, Ziggy. I had visions of hanging onto her by the leash as the bird flew off, like flying an eagle/dog kite…..

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  4. Your tale about the starlings reminds me of an experience I had in undergrad school.
    One day while out pheasant hunting, my friend and I found a red-tailed hawk with a broken wing. We looked it over pretty carefully and determined it hadn’t been shot. Both of us were wannabe veterinarians (though neither of us made it to vet school) so we decided to bring it back to my friend’s place to see if we could nurse it back to health. My friend was renting a farmhouse complete with a barn and a chicken house, so we installed the hawk in a cage in the barn. We bound the wing, fed it meat and gave it water but unfortunately, it did not get better. In fact, it went blind, leading us to suppose it picked up some lead shot, possibly by eating a bird that had been shot and left in the field by a careless hunter. We finally decided to take it to the vet school to see if the could help it. They took it in, and told us that we could have been prosecuted for keeping it, because it was illegal to keep wild birds of prey in captivity. They sent it to a hawk sanctuary where it could get the proper treatment. We never did find out if it got better. Tom Burns

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    1. Ah, Tom, that must have been heartbreaking to go through that and then never find out if it was okay. Well done for trying to save it, though, in my opinion. Thanks for posting. W

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  5. Always fun to have you here, Wendall! Congrats on Cheap Trills, and thanks for sharing that wonderful excerpt! (Although I might think of coffee cups differently now…)

    I’ve got several bird stories. Adding to the hawk train, we do have a Cooper’s hawk flying around here. I’ve also seen ducks waddling around at the nearby school. Plus, we had a house finch nest on our porch once.

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    1. Thanks so much, Jen! I’m always so grateful to all of you for having me. And I love that your life seems surrounded by birds. Sending the best to you, as ever!– W

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  6. I admired her to taking that on in the midst of everything else she was dealing with. That would be a huge responsibility under any circumstances, but especially when a species is as endangered as they are.

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  7. Wendall, you know I’m a fan of you–professionally and personally! This excerpt is a hoot (a tweet?) and reminds me of my cousin who had to feed live crickets to her sons’ various pet snakes. There were moments of hilarity (for me, not her) when all of the crickets escaped and had to tracked down. With mixed results.

    Congrats on the latest/greatest, and thanks for being here! ❤

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    1. Kathleen! So lovely to hear from you and yes, crickets are tricky, but not as tricky as snakes, so yikes! Thanks for the very kind words and hope our paths cross again soon. Wendallxx

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    2. I used to bring crickets inside as pets–I think I learned something at school about Japanese kids keeping crickets in these beautiful little cages. But my crickets always escaped and hung out in the heating vents, where they sang happily but I couldn’t get to them.

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  8. I love CHEAP TRILLS (and all of your books) so much! Thank you for letting me relive some of it again today!

    As for my own chick story, there was actually one in this morning’s paper here in Hilo, Hawai’i: A woman was feeding a family of nene–the endangered goose native to Hawai’i–at a parking lot here in town where they like to hang out, when all of a sudden she pulled out an mesh onion bag and swept one of the goslings into it, then drove off. Some others in the parking lot saw it happen and followed her on a literal wild goose chase–but not metaphorical, as the followers called the cops who pulled the goose thief over. The baby was fine and returned to its doting parents, and the woman was fined $200.

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    1. Wow. I would have hoped for a stiffer fine for gosling theft! Thanks, as always, for your very kind words about the Cyd books, Leslie. You are the bomb. Wendallxx

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        1. Exactly! The fines are so low for wildlife trafficking in general, it’s really not a deterrent, which is a huge part of the problem.

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  9. Leslie’s eagle story reminds me of a story that I have. When I was in high school, I took the city bus to school, very early in the morning. It was a straight shot, two blocks down our street, to walk to the bus stop. At some point, an owl, which must have been nesting in a tree on our street, became very aggressive, and it would swoop over my head as I walked past, so close that I could feel the wind created by its wings. After it happened to me twice, I started walking all the way around the block in the opposite direction to avoid the attacks. My detour continued for a few weeks. I was terrified of that big bird! While I’m here, I’ll add that I really enjoyed your first Cyd Redondo book, “Lost Luggage”, and look forward to continuing the series. Cyd is a hoot!

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      1. The owl hung out in a tree that’s no longer there. It was a tall, pine-fir-evergreen-kind-of-tree as I recall, in our parking strip on 20th, near the Shirk’s driveway. I don’t think I told anyone about the owl at the time. I remember feeling embarrassed about going around the block to avoid it, and not even wanting Mom or Dad to see me taking Marguerita to 21st, LOL.

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    3. Thanks, Laura! This is Wendall, I seem to be in Anonymous mode myself today…Wow, that actually sound quite terrifying. I would have made a detour, too. And thanks for the very kind words about Cyd!

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  10. Wendall, I apologize that I am chiming in late here, but thank you for guesting on Chicks and sharing this amazing post. I was absolutely riveted. I did rescue a white chicken on a street corner in Brooklyn once. No one had any idea where it came from (it likely fell off a truck on way to market). The kids and I had just gotten off the subway from a day at Coney Island, so I was carrying a convenient plastic beach tote. Someone tried to bargain with me so they could take it home and cook it, but I installed Wanda in a lovely crate in the basement of our co-op (yup, in the laundry area) while I tried to find someone (in NYC) to adopt it. The kids and I brought Wanda to the Prospect Park Zoo in a little red wagon in hopes she could live there, but boy were they mad. Lesson learned: Never bring an animal of any kind into the zoo. (Happy ending: Wanda was adopted by a farmer on Long Island, only 2.5 hours away in summer traffic.)

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