Author: Nicholas Diak

Nisi Shawl’s “Street Worm” is the first in a series of stories starring Brit Williams, a young Seattleite who has physic powers. “Street Worm” details the first interaction between Brit and Elias Crofutt, who becomes a mentor to her in subsequent stories. Their initial encounter together does not go well, with Crofutt trying to explain Brit’s powers to her and Brit being rightfully defensive about the stranger. It’s a familiar scene that has played out in a variety of films and books (“You have powers!” “Leave me alone!”) but Shawl inserts in a subtle, unexpected bit of world and character building in the scene.

She has Crofutt drink a cocktail. Specifically, a Jungle Bird, which is a tiki libation.

In the world of dark fiction and horror, mixed drinks, let alone a tiki drink, make rare appearances. The dark literary genre typically adheres to the basics when it comes to drinkables: beer, wine, and blood (though an author may throw in the occasional whisky, but it must always be followed by a description of how it “burns going down”). The rarity of cocktails in dark fiction (and probably fiction as a whole) is fairly easy to comprehend: not all writers and their readers are mixologists and not all writers and their readers consume mixed drinks. Most writers and readers know what beer and wine tastes like, thus a “stick with what you know” rule of thumb is applied. 

When a cocktail makes a literary appearance, it is something to take notice. A reader not familiar with cocktails may simply read past the reference and pay it no heed, but a reader versed in cocktails will begin asking questions. What kind of character orders this drink (character building)? What kind of setting serves this drink (world building)?

In “Street Worm” the Jungle Bird is first mentioned as follows:

One of the man’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “Don’t look so surprised! Didn’t you get our message? Aunt Eliza came down with the flu and sent me by myself.” He turned to the waiter as if just noticing him. “I’d like a Jungle Bird, if the bar’s open.”

“Yes, sir!” The waiter left, looking reassured.¹

A few paragraphs later, the tiki cocktail arrives:

Fair enough,” he said again. The waiter returned carrying a glass round as the man’s belly, full of ice and an orangey liquid. A section of a pineapple ring gripped its rim. He left again after taking their orders: lasagna for Brit, which was what she usually had at lunch, and quail for her supposed uncle.²

A cocktail or a tiki enthusiast will instantly know what a Jungle Bird is, but to readers not familiar with it, the drink’s appearance comes off as an exotic libation, a proper noun that stands out in the sentence. Per Shawl:

I have never drunk a Jungle Bird. I don’t consume alcohol much because it gives me migraines. To be honest, I chose the cocktail because the name sounded good with the rest of the words I was using. I’m very picky about that sort of thing.³

For Shawl, the appearance of the Jungle Bird was purely for poetic and aesthetic reasons, and readers not familiar with tiki culture will certainly appreciate this aspect. On the other hand, those versed in tiki history will no doubt experience a different reading, as if reading a coded language exclusively for them.

They’ll no doubt recall the taste of the drink, prior instances of making the drink themselves, and even perhaps the history of the cocktail: it was created at the Aviary Bar at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton in Malaysia toward the end of the 70s.

The Jungle Bird is seen as the last cocktail of the classic tiki period, as the late 70s would see the tiki bar replaced with discotheques and hard drugs, and the 80s a low point in mixology with a move toward prepackaged and blended drinks. While tiki culture has certainly going through a resurgence in the past decade or so, the popularity of the Jungle Bird no doubt trails behind more iconic tiki drinks: the Mai Tai, the Zombie, the Painkiller, and the Navy Grog. 

Regarding world building, what does the Jungle Bird have to say? Usually a Jungle Bird will be found in a tiki bar or a restaurant that specializes in Polynesian cuisine. The establishment Brit and Crofutt are meeting at is certainly not either: they are in the restaurant of the Hotel Monaco in Downtown Seattle, a venue that serves lasagne and quail. Crofutt ordering a Jungle Bird in this bar raises a lot of hypotheticals: is the Jungle Bird on the cocktail menu and perhaps a signature variation for this hotel’s restaurant? Is it an off menu cocktail that Crofutt really likes and he is crossing his fingers that the bartender knows how to make one? Is the bartender familiar with the Jungle Bird, or are they going to consult a resource before making it? The usage of the Jungle Bird in this scene sets off a chain reaction of hypotheticals that certainly shape the scene more so than if the characters simply had a wine, beer, or even a traditional cocktail such as a martini. 

What does the Jungle Bird say about Crofutt? Is he into tiki culture, or perhaps was this a drink he stumbled upon and likes? Does he know how to make one? Has he built his own tiki bar? Is he ordering an offbeat drink in order to give an impression to Brit? What other cocktails does he like? Just as the Vesper Martini, shaken not stirred, says much about super spy James Bond, so too does the Jungle Bird says much about Crofutt. Shawl has graciously expanded on this particular character trait of Crofutt: 

“I like the idea of Crofutt as a tiki-lover. It fits with my overall concept of his personality, as a delver into the unknown and a fan of nonwhite cultures. I will probably pursue this further.”⁴

The Jungle Bird says/asks much about the setting and the characters, but what does the text say about the cocktail proper? The way it looks and is garnished leads to another round of hypotheticals, specifically how the drink is made. Is it true to the original? Is it a variation? Is it an incorrect cocktail altogether that has had the Jungle Bird moniker slapped onto it by a novice bartender?

Prior, Shawl described the cocktail as “orangey,” served in a large, round glass, and garnished with a pineapple wheel. More questions are raised: where is the mint? Why a large, round glass instead of, say, a tiki mug or double rocks glass? What makes it orangey? Bottled pineapple juice or freshly squeezed? Again, these questions lead to more setting building and establishing. 

Though Shawl does not partake in alcoholic libations, her description of the Jungle Bird is pretty spot on. The color of the Jungle Bird ranges from different shades of red due to the presence of Campari, a vibrant red and extremely bitter apéritif. The colors of the other ingredients used in the Jungle Bird (the syrups, rums, juices, etc.) will lighten or darken the drink.

The are a variety of ways to make a Jungle Bird. The traditional recipe is as follows:

0.75 oz Campari
0.50 oz fresh lime juice
0.50 oz sugar syrup
4.0 oz unsweetened pineapple juice
1.50 oz dark Jamaican rum 

This original 1978 version, documented by Beachbum Berry in Intoxica!, is shaken with ice, open poured into a double old-fashioned glass or tiki mug and garnished with an orchid and a cocktail pick with a maraschino cherry, lemon, and orange wheels.⁵

Four ounces of pineapple juice is a lot of pineapple juice. Martin and Rebecca Cate rectify this imbalance in their Smugglers Cove book:

2.0 oz pineapple juice
0.50 oz fresh lime juice
0.50 oz Demerara sugar syrup
0.75 oz Campari
1.50 oz black blended rum

This incarnation is blended with crushed ice and opened poured into a tall glass like a highball or a Collins and garnished with pineapple fronds.⁶

Shannon Mustipher embraces the bitterness of the Jungle Bird in Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails by eliminating the sugar syrup:

2.0 oz pot still Jamaican rum
0.75 oz Campari
1.50 oz pineapple juice
0.50 oz fresh lime juice

This Jungle Bird is shaken with ice, strained into a Collins glass full of ice, and garnished with pineapple fronds and a scored lime wheel.⁷

There are, of course, even more variations of the Jungle Bird out there, specially among the YouTube cocktail channel crowd. These examples, however, demonstrate the foundational and core elements of what constitutes the legacy cocktail. 

Knowing what ingredients constitute a Jungle Bird combined with Shawl’s descriptors and assumptions made from the variety of hypotheticals, a Jungle Bird as Crofutt orders can be approximated.

It is within reason to assume that the Jungle Bird is not a signature item on the cocktail menu for this restaurant. Going by the fact that the restaurant serves lasagne and quail, it’s also a good guess that this restaurant and bar is going to be more European focused. It probably contains a nice variety of scotches, vermouths, and vodkas, but perhaps stocked only with the necessities for rum. This means, for a dark Jamaican rum, it’ll have stocked a rum that’s fairly easy to obtain with a low price: it will probably be Myers’s. The bar will probably use canned pineapple juice, but probably juice their own limes so that they can accommodate other cocktails, such as margaritas. They probably will not make their own simple syrup, instead opting to buy pre-made. Of course, Campari is Campari, there are no substitutions.

With the above in mind, it’s now a question of balancing these ingredients to get the right amount of orangeness over redness for the Jungle Bird depicted in the story. It can be accomplished by adding one more ounce of pineapple juice:

0.75 oz Campari
0.50 oz fresh lime juice
0.50 oz Rose’s simple syrup
5.0 oz pineapple juice
1.50 oz Myers’s Jamaican rum

For this Jungle Bird iteration, shake all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker. Open pour into a large Brandy snifter (to give it that round appearance) and fill with more crushed or pebble ice. Garnish with a pineapple wheel.

This Jungle Bird, like the original 1970s version, is extremely generous with the pineapple juice, but manages to taste quite nice and will likely be satisfactory for Crofutt as a tiki cocktail consumed at a non-tiki bar.

If Crofutt does venture down the path of becoming a tiki enthusiast as Shawl wants him to be, the final question would be: how will Crofutt make his Jungle Bird? He will probably mimic the Smuggler’s Cove version. It would be his choice of rum that would be unique to him. There is only one rum out there that contains the signature “funk” that dark Jamaican rums have, but would also fit perfectly with the poetry that Shawl is aiming for in her text by using “Jungle Bird.”

That would be Doctor Bird.

1.5 oz Doctor Bird Jamaican rum
0.75 oz Campari
0.5 oz Demerara simple syrup
0.5 oz lime juice (freshly squeezed)
2.0 oz pineapple juice (canned or fresh)

Crofutt will likely add all in ingredients into a shaker with crushed or pebble ice. He’d then open pour into a tall Collins glass and lavishly garnish. 

This would create a balanced Jungle Bird with top shelf ingredients, one that Crofutt would no doubt enjoy immensely. 

Endnotes

1. Nisi Shawl, “Street Worm,” in Exploring Dark Short Fiction – Modern Masters #3: A Primer to Nisi Shawl, ed. Eric J. Guignard (Los Angeles, CA: Dark Moon Books, 2018), 82.

2. Ibid., 82-82.

3. Nisi Shawl, email message to author, September 3, 2019.

4. Ibid.

5. Jeff Berry, Beachbum Berry’s Intoxica! (San Jose, CA: SLG Publishing, 2002), 44.

6. #. Martin Cate and Rebecca Cate, Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki (Berkeley, CA: 10 Speed Press, 2016), 96.

7. Shannon Mustipher, Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails (New York, NY: Rizzoli, 2019), 36.

Bibliography

Berry, Jeff. Beachbum Berry’s Intoxica!. San Jose, CA: SLG Publishing, 2002. 

Cate, Martin and Rebecca Cate. Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki. Berkeley, CA: 10 Speed Press, 2016.

Mustipher, Shannon. Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 2019. 

Shawl, Nisi. “Street Worm.” In Exploring Dark Short Fiction – Modern Masters #3: A Primer to Nisi Shawl. Edited by Eric J. Guignard. Los Angeles, CA: Dark Moon Books, 2018.