Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency Year Four:
Case File No. 02-158
AMBER LOVE 25-MAY-2020 Find out how all this began. Catch up on Year One, Year Two, and Year Three cases at the Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency. Thank you for all your financial and social support! Oliver and Gus are looking forward to bringing you more fascinating discoveries and investigations into the chipmunk mafia, the blue jay gang, the neighborhood critters, and cryptid sightings.
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Where We Left Off:
Excitement launched our fourth year of investigations when a beautiful young volkolak came looking for food.
Calling Dr. Death:
If you’ve been paying attention to our weekly case files (you have been, haven’t you?), you would see that it’s been an interesting spring season here at the Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency. We’ve had an influx of blue jay gang members for starters. It seemed to take a while for the Chipmunk Mafia to show their faces and bushy tails again. There was also a brand new strange feline intruder and a new volkolak. Something we didn’t see coming was a peculiar and friendly black vulture.
(click through using the arrow when you hover over the IG picture to get to the videos)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_ii7aHJZGe/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
The intriguing visitor wasn’t with a flock — or wake as vulture groups are called. A creature all alone doesn’t make for much of a wake. We became worried that something the bird was either injured or rejected somehow from its chosen family. The vulture acted weird as far as we could tell. It didn’t take flight whenever we watched it. It could flap its wings and get high enough to reach the top of a dumpster or railing, but otherwise, we watched it waddle across the lawns. Is that normal?
The turkey vulture that was feeding on the Jersey devil-deer carcass stayed on branches to keep an eye on me and Gus while we kept our eyes on them. That was an entirely different experience than watching this all black bird waddle around.
I received two names for consideration so I’m combining them. This odd bird, we’re calling Hector Cassano Livingston II, stayed around the neighborhood for days. The Cook wanted to feed it to make sure it was able to eat. We never saw it with any food. So I waited for Oliver to come into the office and hop up to the new beautiful ceramic fountain next to my desk. It was research time!
Besides scavenging on roadkill which serves the community and ecosystem, I found out vultures will also eat eggs from other birds’ nests. It sounded like a long shot, but The Cook left out two eggs for me to deliver. I placed them on the ground at the base of the young magnolia tree with some peanuts. This was April 29th — the day before the day of Walspurgisnacht which is the night before May Day (or as pagans call it, Beltane). There was more rain expected so I had already planned to delay the Fairy Beltane Party until the weekend. The Cook also took some old chicken on the bone from one of the freezers and I delivered that to the spot near the body farm. It felt appropriate for the season and to do something nice for a potentially outcast bird friend.
On May 2nd it was time to welcome the fairies back to their garden. It was upgraded with a new chair and table set; and, I moved the light string that broke in half at Gnome Grove to wrap around the fairy tree stump. That’s when I noticed the eggs at the magnolia tree were gone. I asked The Cook if she moved them and she said she didn’t. I had already noted that the chicken was completely gone. Whoever took that didn’t even leave any bones.
Case Findings:
It appears that the odd vulture moved on after a few days hanging around our yards, porches, and fences. The Cook believes it got to eat the chicken and eggs. I certainly hope so too.
Case Status: Closed
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.