Marionette children

The fisher crow (Corvus bastardus), also known as the bastard crow, the marionette crow, or metonymically as a marionette child, is a curious scavenger corvid native to the Razor Valley region of Shaster and Selestei. Fisher crows are distinguished by their long and lean bodies, but most especially by the extremely thin, prehensile tendrils that trail from their claws. These tendrils are capable of cutting through flesh with ease. Unexpectedly for something that isn't from Barcu, however, fisher crows usually refrain from using their tendrils to hunt prey directly, and instead prefer the much more horrifying method of using them to control child-size marionette puppets. The popular sobriquet "marionette children" was first used to refer to these puppets, but these days it is often used to refer to the fisher crows themselves.

Fisher crows are omnivorous, eating fruits, nuts, insects, other birds, and carrion. They will not hesitate to prey on live animals, even larger livestock or the occasional human. When they attack live prey much larger than themselves, they approach from above, seize it with their marionette, and then carry it off into the sky. Some research was once attempted into how it is that fisher crows can lift large prey when they appear to have no more lifting power than other birds, but this was done by having volunteers bait fisher crows into carrying them off, which resulted in a cancelled research program and a complimentary thanatology degree. It is no longer considered an open research question.

An international incident was precipitated in AES 967 when it was discovered that The Contagious Republic of Paul Vigotski had colonized a fisher crow. The Assembly immediately began disputing whether the more pressing issue was that the Republic has developed the capability to infect across species or that it had now had the use of a marionette child. In the confusion, Vigotski himself slipped away, prompting the Assembly to order the Taurus Research Station to be turned planetside for the first time, ostensibly for observation. Vigotski was caught in the parking lot and returned to the Assembly, where the assembled sovereigns ordered the Republic to turn over the infected bird for termination. The Republic, rather too easily, complied. Since the crow was technically a citizen of the Contagious Republic, the extradition paperwork took a week to get straight, at which point it was summarily executed and the corpse burned. Ever since then, there seem to be an awful lot of crows in the trees around the Assembly building.