In this shot, Sushi is upset at coming face-to-face with a maskless stranger, but he happens to have a mask handy at the front door for such occasions — just like my wife does.
When tossing an object from one puppet to another, you can pull the old knife-throw trick used in live action shows. Here, there’s enough stiffness in the mask’s fishing line ear straps to hold it up in the air, thereby simulating centrifugal force for the fraction of a second necessary to achieve the sleight-of-hand illusion in the next shot.
(We’ll cover actual flying animation in future scenes.)