Shock at Terrifying Find in Bag of Dollar Store Halloween Décor

A crafter has been stunned to discover something strange among their dollar store craft supplies while making Halloween decorations.

Inside a packet of craft feathers they had purchased at a local Dollarama store was what appeared to be an animal claw. The startling find was shared on Reddit's "r/animalid" subreddit by the user Poya Stillwater, who was seeking help in identifying the claw and its origin.

Stillwater, who lives in British Columbia, Canada, shared their discovery on the subreddit. They initially bought the feather packets from a nearby branch of the Canadian dollar store chain, Dollarama, as part of their Halloween decoration preparations. What caught their attention was the presence of a mysterious talon-like structure within the feathers, which they initially mistook for a piece of plastic or some other foreign object.

"When I first saw the talon-like object, I didn't even realize what it was," Stillwater told Newsweek. "I had dumped the bag of feathers out to sort them by size, and initially just thought it was a piece of plastic or some such. It wasn't until I noticed the scaly texture that I took a closer look, and that's when I saw the claw on the end as well."

A spokesperson for Dollarama told Newsweek: "Dollarama is committed to providing safe, quality products. The information provided has been shared with the appropriate department for review and investigation, as per our standard procedures. We invite the customer to contact Dollarama's customer service department directly if they have not done so already."

Despite the strange discovery, they decided against lodging a complaint. "It's not like the factory in China that the feathers actually came from would hear about it, and bugging some minimum wage retail employees over something so small seemed silly," Stillwater said. Instead, they turned to the Reddit community for help in identifying the strange claw.

Their initial suspicion was that the claw might be related to the bird from which the feathers were sourced, but their partner pointed out the scaly texture, prompting them to turn to the internet for help.

"This photo is terrifying at first glance," said one Reddit user.

"I didn't know craft feathers were real feathers," said another viewer of the post, while one reply added: "Same... Kind of sad."

Online, people were quick to help and responded with their thoughts, quickly concluding that the claw and feathers likely belonged to a guinea fowl.

"Those are guinea fowl feathers, that's definitely part of a foot from one too," said a commenter.

There were also a few misunderstandings and misinterpretations among online commenters. Some Reddit users thought that the craft materials featured in the photo were blood and gore, causing the post to be reported for self-harm, despite the fact that Stillwater had already explained that the red marks around the feathers and claw were simply remnants from the Halloween craft project, and nothing to worry about.

UPDATE 10/27/23 03:25 a.m.: This article has been updated with new information. The headline was also updated.