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            This past week I had to put my dog to sleep after 13 years of her being like a sister to me, and a huge part of our family. Oddly enough this tragedy has hit my family on the same week that my first Zomblog and reflection is due.  While struggling for ideas and parallels to draw on for this first blog post; I realized that the feelings my mother, father, and I felt while watching our dog Derby struggle and grow weaker, un able to help, were very similar feelings a citizen in my community might have watching a loved one who has been infected or bitten by a Zombie.

Just as my family and I were unable to help Derby as her central nervous system was failing, the same would be the case in a Zombie apocalypse.  Having seen the movie I-Robot staring Will Smith; the reality of a Zombie apocalypse and loosing a dog or any loved one to a Zombie like disease resonated in my mind writing this blog post. As a citizen member of my community, and having just dealt with a real life traumatic family issue, where hard decisions had to be made, I couldn’t help but think of the clip we watched from Spoiler.  I began to think about if Derby had been exposed or bitten by Zombies that we would have to make a similar decision we did for nervous system failure, but deal with it in a manner similar to the way the authorities and doctors in Spoiler had to.

Seeing first hand with Derby how hard it is was not being able to communicate or help a loved one dying from a disease is incredibly hard, and all I can picture in my mind is the father with the deer rifle in the window in the scene we watched from Walking Dead.  It was brutal enough watching an animal that has been part of our family for so long struggle with a disease and grow weaker, I cant even imagine what it would be like if that were my mother, my father, a sibling, or any relative infected and still “alive” but unable to cure.  Perhaps this is what drives our modern day infatuation with Zombies, and the “walking dead” … the un-curable reality.  The fact that Zombies represent the unknown, the intangible, and something that is right in front of us yet mentally and physically a world away from what we as humans can comprehend and understand.  Just as no Veterinarian or human was every really able to get inside Derby’s head to help her, the same is true for the relationship between Zombies and humans. Maybe this is why it almost feels worse when an animal member of the family like a cat or dog dies or becomes ill. The lack of communication, and failure to find complete understanding makes it harder on us humans not affected, and all the more difficult to take action accordingly. Just as the husband in the Walking Dead knows that deep down his wife never wanted to be infected, never wanted to become a Zombie, he is still terribly unable to “relieve her misery” or kill her.

Fortunately for my family and me there is no (known) Zombie apocalypse-taking place at the moment.  However since the start of this class I often find myself blending real world reality with the “what if’s” if we really were living during a Zombie apocalypse. As a citizen member of my community I am just a common man in the community, and with that on my mind I wondered how we would deal with a situation like this during a Zombie apocalypse. Would we have been able to get the dog help? Would this have really be a priority in a situation like the one faced by the characters in Courtney Summer’s work This is Not a Test when the outside world as we know it is deteriorating rapidly around us? These are interesting questions a citizen thinks about when he starts applying what is happening in his current life, to how he would deal with these same events during a Zombie apocalypse. 

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2 Responses so far.

  1. Anonymous says:

    Hey Jeff,
    First off, sorry about Derby.
    Great post though. At first reading through this post I was thinking that the Derby metaphor wasn't really going to stick well, but you made it work.
    I think you've wonderfully linked the inexplainable quality of zombies to the real-life tragedy of losing an animal. I think part of the terror, and terrifying nature of zombies is the situation where you have to do something (put down) a loved one, but without the chance to explain to them that this is a better alternative than letting them live on as a zombie. Without the cognitive skills needed to be reasoned with, the zombie becomes like an animal that you have to take executive action with.

  2. Unknown says:

    While reading this the main thing that struck me was the fact that there is no real goodbye. With a human (who isn't a zombie) we are able to have some closure and speak to them in their final moments, but with animals and zombies, this isn't the case. I, too, have had to put animals down for various reasons and it never gets easier. I think the hardest part is not being able to communicate with them. Body language is a huge way of communicating, but with zombies we don't even have the benefit of that. They are a shell with nothing inside them (debatable, I know). This lack of closure in any situation of death makes it extremely difficult. I don't know if I could've killed my wife if I was sitting in the window with a shotgun. I see it as one of those situations where you don't know how you would handle it, until you are stuck making the decision.

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