ON THE GRAINY videotape the children's faces are grayed out to protect the guilty. Some appear as young as three, others as old as eight. But they all know how to rumble.

These marauding kids turn the most apparently harmless of objects into weapons. A plastic spoon can stab. An animal made entirely of yellow, twisted balloons becomes a puffy bludgeon. The children squeal and giggle as they attack, swarming the flimsy stage en masse to punch and poke and grab. The focus of their gleeful rage: a sad little granny puppet, who shrieks at them to back off, which only excites the rampaging kiddies more.

It's enough to make you glad you aren't a puppeteer – if you weren't glad about that already.

Jeff Danger, 41, puppeteer, magician, and president of Stop Attacks Against Puppets, says that the violence must end. "It's a big problem. Obviously, if you're not in puppetry circles, you don't hear much about it," he says, when reached by phone in Cambridge, Mass.

As the graphic images on the when-children-attack-puppets video show, some preteens just don't grasp the concept of the fourth wall. But it's hard to blame them. What's more fun: sitting still and watching a piece of cloth try to act or beating up on it?

Even Danger admits that there can be a lot to lash out against at your average show. "S.A.A.P. understands that some puppet shows are boring, stupid, and performed by individuals with no talent who deserve to be attacked," his group's Web site reads. "However, we strongly believe that puppeteers deserve the same rights as other human beings." In other words: no biting. But leaving the room in mid-performance to get a cookie might be OK.

Still, for all of their moral righteousness about the human dignity of puppet masters, you won't find Danger and co. standing up in solidarity with other performers under siege: "Mimes probably get attacked more," he says. "But they deserve it." So much for coalition building.

It was a performance at the grand opening of a Burger King that galvanized Danger into action. "The last show, I was wrestling with this kid with my Babar the Elephant, and I thought, 'That's it. I'm not going to take it anymore!' "

SAAP, now less than a year old, has nine paying members who forked over $25 for a T-shirt and a membership card.

There are no statistics on how widespread a problem puppet violence is, but Danger has created a profile of the typical attacker. "The average age of an attacker is a little over 6 years. At least 70 percent of them are boys," he says. Danger and many other puppeteers won't perform for groups of boys around 9 or 10 years old "no matter what the money is," because it's just too chancy. Is this gender and age profiling by puppeteers? Maybe. But Danger calls it self-defense.

The parents of the attackers are often ashamed that their children have problems with puppets. "They're usually in the back somewhere, too embarrassed to admit that's their kid going wild up there," Danger says. What's a concerned parent to do? The only advice Danger has is pretty generic: Just say no. Tell the little bruisers in a stern voice that "hitting puppets is not OK."

Danger does not advocate giving a crazed child a balloon-animal beating yourself. "Parents should not hit their children to show how puppets feel," he says. "That's just not right." And SAAP also takes a firm stand against electric-shock collars, which deliver a small jolt to any child who gets within three feet of the puppet stage.

No one knows what causes puppet attacks. "It's innate. It's instinctive," Danger says. "There's just something about the intimate setting of a puppet show that's different from TV or videos or the Internet. There is something real about puppets." The sick truth: there's a vicarious thrill that comes from watching children flail and flog puppets.

Danger's educational video documenting puppet attacks is designed to raise awareness of the problem, but it has the opposite effect. The tots' frenzy is oddly appealing, even exhilarating.

You'll find yourself rooting for the goofy mob, not the helpless puppets and the panicky puppeteer. It's like a puppet snuff video, sure to end up digitized and traded freely on Limewire.com, like so much illicit puppet porn – a whole new fringe fetish just waiting to be discovered.

See the carnage yourself at www.stoppuppetviolence.com.