Ripper

A hunter beautiful but deadly, the ripper tackles its prey in Serinaustra's dark interior jungles with cat-like reflexes and vicious weaponry.

In the jungles of Serinaustra there can be found a dazzling and incredibly graceful scrounger species. While most other descendants of snowscroungers are fairly plain with earthy grey and brown feathers, or have color restricted to bare patches of skin, this one's fur-like plumage decorated with radiant swirls of gold, black and white. If it wants to be seen, it appears in a beam of morning light shining down through the swaying trees and stays still for just a moment, its markings bold and contrasted against the green surroundings which frame her like a portrait. Yet as quickly as she makes her herself known, she vanishes from back where she came, a beautiful ghost slipping silently away back to her own world. She is a thing not only of beauty, but of danger. She is a hunter, and a particularly gruesome one at that.

In the depths of shadow, tangled in forest undergrowth, where the sunlight peers through only in fleeting, shimmering patches in the dark maze of leaves, bold patches of color now serve to hide her in plain sight. If she does not want to be seen, she will not be, and you will never know if she is near. Black and white stripes now break up her outline into light and dark, and light filtering through branches above tints her with a green cast, rendering her almost invisible. She stalks prey on quiet feet, watching from the shadows and the thickets, trailing the  lump-trunkos as they wander along well-worn game trails, waiting for the precise moment to strike. A young one, nearly full grown but inexperienced, steps within two strides of her, and she makes her move. Sudden loud footsteps over dry leaves startle the herd as she darts toward her unwary victim, but he has no time to react before she is upon him. Her agility is unmatched; with powerful legs she springs up and upon his back, where hooked talons slip through coarse feathers and come to rest embedded in skin and muscle. Two sickle-like claws per foot, one each on the inner and outer edge, are held off the ground when running so that they remain razor blade-sharp and cut into hide and sinew like a knife through warm butter. With them she holds on tight, balancing herself as it kicks and bucks to no effect. Her hip and ankle joints are extraordinarily flexible, letting her lie low while maintaining a tight hold on the animal she has targeted, letting it exhaust itself as blood pours from deep puncture wounds around her talons. When it begins to tire just a little, she will quickly re-adjust herself, swinging forward so that her claws come to rest in its neck where she will grip the artery and slice it open to bleed out her prey. When it is fatally wounded she will drop off and retreat to a safe distance, waiting for it to die, and then returning to cut open the belly with those same talons, equally useful as weapons and cutlery. She has no need to make tools any longer, for she is born with all she requires.

With the carcass opened up, the ripper feeds quickly on the most immediately available muscle around the entry wound until she is satiated. Yet she is a small animal, only 30-40 lbs, and her prey is often four or more times her weight. She cannot eat it in one sitting, or even come close, nor can she carry it whole to some safe place. She instead partitions it out, starting by slicing out the most nutritious organs, cutting them out with claws and a small but shearing beak. These pieces are the most highly nutritious of all the meat, and moreso, easily cached up in the trees so that if scavengers usurp her kill, she will not be left without something for later. She climbs up steep trunks using her legs, flexible enough to wrap around the surface more like an arm than a leg, and with her tentacles, each tipped in a small keratin hook. She can even rest while clinging to the bark with her talons without slipping backwards by propping herself up with her elongated tail in the manner of a woodpecker, which has a rough, horn-like pad at its end, normally hidden by feathers, to aid in this use. 

The ripper, if she is not disturbed, dismembers her prey into pieces and hides it around her territory throughout the day, cutting apart the animal in a characteristic way that effectively hollows it out and then, once all innards are neatly removed, begins removing the extremities; the trunk is all muscle without bone and easily severed, while the legs take more work to saw off  joint by joint. In the end, the hunter leaves behind a hollow torso still with significant meat on it, but firmly attached to large bones that she is not easily able to cut apart and carry away. Satisfied with what she could carry and hide, she leaves the rest for scavengers and may not need to hunt again for a week or more, lazing about in the safety of the treetops. She raises her egg and resulting single chick here in a large hollow tree, where it is much safer than on the ground, and so unlike most scroungers, she doesn't need a male to assist her and chases suitors off shortly after mating takes place, choosing to live their adult lives - outside child-rearing - entirely alone.