Okay, so yesterday I was talking about
which animals would survive the Zombie Apocalypse. But most of that theorizing
was based on an animal’s survivability. But that got the old wheels a turning
and I got to thinking about the scavengers.
Is there a food out there (you know
aside from White Castle) that is so disgusting that scavengers won’t touch it?
Do animals have a certain keen insight to know to stay away from tainted or
poisoned meat? Or are buzzards just like, “I don’t give a !@#$. Meat is meat.”
I am going to assume that consuming
the meat of any zombie is pretty much going to kill anything that consumes it.
That is just a theory and for some reason, no one amongst the survivors are
willing to try a slice of zombie to prove my theory. And that is in spite of my
best arguments that include yelling at them, “It’s for science, people!”
“But I don’t want to die.” Pffftt.
What a bunch of crybabies.
So for the record, we are going with
zombified meat is toxic to anything that consumes it. Now, the question is to
what level of zombification qualifies it as toxic.
Scenario 1) Zombie Zack has been full
on zombified. Bitten, the virus ran its course, he died, resurrected and is now
staggering around the city. Obviously no carrion bird is going to attack him
while he is moving. Zack comes across a sniper and it is brain pan city. Zombie
Zack’s lifeless (again) body drops to the parking lot. Two days pass. Alpha
Buzzard comes by. Is the buzzard smart enough to not eat the tainted meat? Does
its instincts kick in and it flies on its merry way? We are not certain. But we
are assuming that if it eats the meat, it dies.
Scenario 2) Kicking Kathy went down
screaming. Bitten and savaged by a pack of zoms, she died as a result of blood
loss. They chow down on her extremities but then move on. Now we have seen this
event occur. Even if you die from bleeding out, your mangled body does rise a
few days later. Within the first twelve hours of her death, that same buzzard
comes flying by. She has not risen but she is infected. The virus was not
allowed to run its course but it is in her system. If the buzzard eats on what
is left, is it less likely to know the food is tainted? And if it consumes the
meat, does this punch the clock on the buzzard as well, only it dies 24 hours
after ingesting the meat as opposed to 2 hours as with Scenario 1?
Does burning the bodies purge the
virus and could scavenger animals eat zombie barbeque without getting sick? Or,
again, do those animal instincts kick in and there was no way you could force
this down a hyena’s throat?
I know this can seem like a silly
topic of conversation but here is something to consider. All these domesticate
animals that are now running around with no masters to feed them are going to
get hungry. And hunger breeds desperation. If some stray dog wandered through
Langley right now, there are quite a few zom corpses to feed on.
If all scavenging animals eat this
poisoned flesh and are dead in twelve hours, this changes a biological
ecosystem dramatically. And not just the big predators like buzzards and
hyenas. We are talking things like coyotes, dogs, raccoons, rats, mice, flies. Hell, any meat eater becomes a scavenger if
not enough food is available.
If that meat is toxic, this could be a whole other
problem Mother Nature will have to course correct.
