Butter squirrel

This thing began its career as a branch of a shrub, then it became a butterquirrl, and finally it became a museum object. What is the story behind this biography?

A few years ago, a museum curator was traveling with a priest from a small village in Bhutan in a high valley to research the local mountain deities. It was late in the year, the mountain pastures had long been abandoned and the huts were locked. The two spent the night in caves. Every evening, the priest cut a piece of a branch from a bush that grew in as many branches as possible. He quickly trimmed it with a knife. After boiling the tea leaves over an open fire, he added salt and a handful of butter. He then whisked the brew with this piece to make the butter tea typical of the entire Himalayan region. In the evening, he carved a small ornament at the end of the stem, probably to pass the time. A pretty ornament without any semantic meaning. After breakfast the next morning, he threw the Quirrl away; bushes were also growing at the next sleeping place. He was astonished when the museum curator picked it up and took it with him. The astonished question "why?" was answered with "because it will one day be on display in a museum". An answer that immediately led to the next question, whether there were no suitable shrubs in Austria, why support such a thing? Questions that express the astonishment at the institution of the ethnographic museum of someone whose life is reported on there.