SOS: ZOMBIE SANTA TRAP

Oh the mall, the mall, THE MALL. The sales, the bells, the Christmas trees, the shambling horde of festive zombies. This year may be the most dangerous shopping season ever, with new reports of canny zombies disguising themselves as your friendly neighborhood mall Santa. That’s right, zombie Santas appearing at malls around the world.

While the mall debate always heats up at this, the coldest time of the year, 2010 may be the worst one on record. With recent record-breaking retail numbers, it’s a banner year for mall zombies everywhere. Disturbing reports are trickling in from around the globe of a few zombies with a highly-evolved deceptive new feeding strategy. THE MALL SANTA DISGUISE.

What more efficient way for a zombie to procure an endless queue of tender, young brain material? No more extended staggering slow-motion hunting for these zombies. It’s like a brain buffet delivery. But better. Because young brains, as we all know, are a zombie delicacy, the equivalent of zombie veal. And zombies, who are well known for their excellent listening skills and their epic inability to feel pain, actually make passably good, very patient mall Santas. Even with really heavy kids and/or really long wish lists, the mall zombie Santa just grunts agreeably, looking for all appearances about like what you would expect from the average mall Santa! Right up until the moment he rips your nose off your face to get to your brain. A survivor managed to catch one on video, below:

So how’s the smart survivor to tell the difference between a zombie Santa and one who is maybe just hung over?

Well the Monstrometer can help but the area scan will likely not be 100% reliable due to the proximity of so many other mall zombies. Understandably you may not want to administer the biometric scan at all. In this case, your best clues may come from the kids themselves. Watch them very closely. While it’s very normal for kids to kick and scream on their way to slaughter –  I mean Santa – it’s also normal for this kicking and screaming to eventually cease, as the child senses the barbaric seasonal ritual coming to an end. By the time it is actually over, most child will be very happy to leave, often showing no signs of visible blood or brain material on their faces.

Now with a zombie Santa of course, this is not the case. The screaming and crying will suddenly intensify as the Zombie Santa bites into the center of the child’s face. By most reports zombie Santas go straight for a child’s nose as this cartilaginous protuberance provides softest and easiest access to the brain, through the hypothalamus.

If you do encounter a dangerous Zombie Santa, do not draw attention to yourself by attempting to neutralize him by yourself.  Remember you are on their turf. And above all, do NOT give him your Christmas list. He’ll only ooze on it.

We’ll deal with this more in Sunday’s blog post. Until then, keep on keeping on this holiday season.