The more I think about it, the more I have to conclude its because people are everywhere. Or, people are where people are. When a person becomes a zombie, he is in place where there were people. There’s probably a term for this in virology. Like target-rich environment, or close-sector vectoring, or something.
And it might also be the case that animals can’t turn into zombies. I know this has been treated in a few zombie movies. Help me remember—did 28 Days Later have zombie dogs? I can make an excuse for that—dogs are basically humans, when it comes to social structures, especially human ones.
Either or, we could say that the only reason zombies aren’t eating animals is because there are no animals around. They would, like in the first episode or The Walking Dead, when they ate that horse. Would a zombie eat a turkey? Would it make the zombie sleepy?
No, and no, I say. No because they would not recognize it as food, or sentient, for that matter. Turkeys have a reported IQ of -10. I am not making that up. They’re basically plants with feathers. No, worse than that. Plants at least don’t drown in the rain. Turkeys will stare at the sky when it rains until their gullets fill with water and they keel over.
Yes, all of that comes from myths that are as perennial as the “eating turkey makes you sleepy” trope. But zombies are fictional too. I can put turkey tropes in my zombie world if I want. And in that world, turkeys are stupid and safe from zombie attacks. They're symbols of a world where there are no shuffling gut gobblers.
In that world, people gather once a year to appreciate just being alive. Then they chase down a turkey, rip it to shreds, and devour it in greasy bites just because that's what zombies wouldn't do.
That's what thanksgiving means to me.
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