No one seems to have noticed the drop bear joke

The novel Usurpation discusses drop bears a lot: voracious carnivores originally from Cygni, a distant star system.

“Those definitely should not have been let loose on Earth because they didn’t just eat small animals, they’d attack human toddlers. I had friends who hunted drop bears, and I didn’t want to kill robots, but it was different for drop bears.” (Chapter 2)

“Foehn contacts Boreas and me. ‘I see a drop bear! You know what the fippokats are going to do!’” (Chapter 5)

Here’s the joke, per Drop bear - Wikipedia:

“The drop bear (sometimes dropbear) is a hoax in contemporary Australian folklore featuring a predatory, carnivorous version of the koala. This imaginary animal is commonly spoken about in tall tales designed to scare tourists. While koalas are typically docile herbivores (and are not bears), drop bears are described as unusually large and vicious marsupials that inhabit treetops and attack unsuspecting people (or other prey) that walk beneath them by dropping onto their heads from above.”

Learn more about the drop bear at CNN and at the Australian Museum.

The alien fauna mentioned in Usurpation also includes the tree octopus.

Sometimes I get bored and find ways to quietly entertain myself as I write. No apologies.