How to Preserve Bugs and Dead Things

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When she was 11, Kathleen began raising beetles for a science fair project. She had to keep track of what they were doing and watch very carefully because one of the specimens that she put in there was a bird. The bugs will completely consume the tiny bones on a small specimen like that. And we also did not kill anything for her to do this. A bird flew into our living room window as happenstance; so she collected that and put it in there first. Even today, the bird skeleton lies in its box in her mother's sewing room.

There are plenty of things we don't share with our mothers. Dark, sad things. Unless of course, you both speak the same dark language. Kathleen Vernon is a coroner in Albany County, Wyoming, the youngest ever, in fact. But she didn’t come to this preternatural curiosity just on her own; the business of death runs in the family.

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