The Maine moose turd lady may go global.
Mary Winchenbach and her wife, Deb Nicholls, are in discussions with TNT about a reality series featuring their moose-turd art, which exploded in popularity after a video of Winchenbach hawking her moose-poop wares was viewed 3.3 million times on Facebook.
Their Lincoln County business, Tirdy Works, was flooded with so many orders that Winchenbach quit her day job so the two could make more earrings, clocks and other items out of moose droppings.
Raina Falcon, a spokeswoman for Turner, a Time Warner company that owns TNT, confirmed Thursday that the cable network is discussing a reality show about the moose-turd artists from Somerville.
Winchenbach and Nicholls met with Jenny Ramirez, TBS and TNT’s vice president of unscripted programming, about the reality show when they were in Los Angeles last month to film an interview with comedian Daniel Tosh for his show “Tosh.0.”
The couple are waiting for a contract from TNT for their lawyer to review.
Winchenbach said Ramirez discussed a yearlong reality series that would follow the two women as they make moose-turd art for Tirdy Works, and go into the woods to collect moose droppings. They discussed the show with Ramirez at her Burbank, California, office where Winchenbach showed off her upbeat, silly sense of humor and rapid-fire, auctioneer-style delivery.
Winchenbach liked Ramirez’s vision of what the reality show could be.
“We would talk about what makes a good turd and what makes a bad turd,” Winchenbach said.
Even so, Nicholls, the quieter partner in the business, is skeptical about whether a reality show about their art would be must-see TV.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Nicholls said. “Seems a little odd to me to want to follow us around in the woods collecting poop. I mean, really? I’m thinking an animated cartoon of fecal people could be fun, maybe even comical for adults or educational for children.”
But Winchenbach, who has become the face of Tirdy Works, is thrilled.
“It’s overwhelming. It’s humbling. I’ve been doing this for 13 years, and now it’s exploding,” Winchenbach said. “I feel like if we don’t go for it, we’re never going to know what could happen. The worst thing is, I don’t try. I’d like to see it snowball. I think it will happen.”
Winchenbach’s moose-poop art became an overnight success after a video of her selling it at the Common Ground Fair went viral Sept. 21. She has been featured in newspapers nationwide and on radio shows from Illinois to Ireland.
Moose-poop art, which is shellacked so that it can be displayed safely, is made by many artists and sold elsewhere. But Winchenbach’s newfound fame has as much to do with her big personality and sense of humor as it does social media, which did not exist when she first started selling moose-poop art in 2005.
In October, Winchenbach, 57, left her job at the seaweed plant, Ocean Organics, to give her moose-poop business a chance to grow. Since then, her days are filled making items such as “poo-poo clocks,” moose-dropping earrings and “fecal people,” which are moose turds fashioned into tiny dolls. Most of her pieces cost between $5 and $45.
Winchenbach said she typically starts at 4 a.m. and works 16-hour days to design, make and ship moose-turd art. She estimated Tirdy Works has filled 4,000 orders in the past three months. She and Nicholls are the only full-time employees, and they employ a few part-time employees as needed.
Although, Winchenbach said, she’d like to build a “(expletive) shack” and hire employees to help make moose-turd products.
“Right now we are literally hundreds of orders behind,” Winchenbach said. “We are shipping (expletive) just as fast as we can. We are shipping probably 50 to 60 orders a day. We’ve gone through 400 pounds of turds in the past month. We are almost out of (expletive). I could use a call center.”
Mary Winchenbach holds a “poo poo clock,” one of her most popular items, noting that at half-past 1 p.m. it’s “one-turdy.” (Portland Press Herald photo by Shawn Patrick Ouellette)
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