Toe bones and porcupine quills: Library patrons create spooky-season 'nature vials'

Toe bones, moss and quill of porcupine — it sounds like the ingredients in a witch’s cauldron.

That means spooky season is the perfect time of year for Britney Jones to present a workshop featuring some of the items from her shop, Mz. Jones’ Curio, in Greensburg.

The Bovard resident showed a group of teens how to create “nature vials” during a workshop at the Greensburg Hempfield Library. And she made sure to get their attention with her table decorations — book-ended by a giant, coiled rattlesnake in a globe full of formaldehyde, and a jet black scorpion in a small clear cube designed to mimic its desert habitat.

“I’ve been doing this for about a decade,” Jones said. “I started with original art and some of the oddities on the side, but the oddities were what really interested people. My husband and I started out doing shows and conventions, and then we opened our location on West Third Street in November 2021. We do big-game taxidermy, we have mice in dioramas doing things like sitting down at dinner, and we have scenes that are more natural.”

To create nature vials, participants chose from a smorgasbord of oddities including porcupine quills, coyote toe bones, dried snake skin, gems, minerals and more.

Ryan Allen, 15, of Acme had a selection of quills, minerals, feathers and some bright blue moss for his vial.

“I’m making mine for a friend,” he said.

The vial options were just a few of the wide variety of “curios” in Jones’ collection, which range from animal skulls to ornately framed mummified specimens, to full-on wet specimens that have been embalmed and preserved in formaldehyde.

“We use almost all parts of the animal,” Jones said. “Bones for jewelry, bodies for mummification or preservation. We can’t do anything with organs like the intestines, but we try not to waste anything.”