Animate Dead Animals

This spell is often a necromancer's first experience with the animation of corpses. Choose a pile of bones or corpse of a beast within range, which must have been CR 0, unaligned, and a vertebrate. The target rises as an undead version of its living form. It uses its normal statistics but is undead, gains darkvision to a range of 60 feet if it didn't already have it, and immunity to poison damage, exhaustion, and the poisoned condition. If you targeted bones it is skeletal; it gains a +2 bonus to AC and has vulnerability to bludgeoning damage. If you targeted a corpse it is zombified; its speed is reduced by 10 and it gains the zombie's Undead Fortitude feature (PHB pg. 311).

On each of your turns, you can use a bonus action to mentally command any creature you made with this spell if it is within 60 feet of you. You decide what action the creature will take and where it will move during its next turn, or you can issue a general command, such as to guard a particular chamber or corridor. If you issue no commands, the creature only defends itself against hostile creatures. Once given an order, the creature continues to follow it until its task is complete.

When the spell ends, the target becomes inanimate.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a 2nd-level spell slot, you can animate a beast of CR 1/8. When you cast this spell using a 3rd-level spell slot, you can animate a CR 1/4 beast.