Zombiepocalypse

As referenced in a really old blog post—walk with the scientists—Brian’s department holds a retreat at the beginning of each year. It’s a time to get to know the new students and have some fun away from campus. The retreat used to be held all the way out at the biostation, several hours north, where most of the department does their field research. Bri’s professor (Trisha) had long lobbied that as an evolutionary biologist, she would not attend such a thing because a) non ecologists do not want to give up their whole weekend to tramps around in the woods with ecologists and b)she doesn’t do field work, and thus has no desire to go to the biostation. To appease her (and appear as if they had a unified department), the Ecologists compromised and will be holding the retreat near Ann Arbor every other year.

This means that when the retreat is in town, Trisha and Brian are obligated to go. Which makes me obligated to go. So we went. And it sucked. We joined a group touring a “fen”, which, as we learned after we were at the site and had no way to leave, was just another word for swamp. At one point, our tour guide decided to take the group into the swamp. Brian and I did not bring our waders, and so said we’d wait behind. The department chair assured us they’d be back in 5 minutes, and disappeared for an hour as we swatted at mosquitoes and talked about how much we hate ecologists. And texted the absent Trisha things like “your baby better have pink eye.”

Turns out, she had an even better reason for not attending. The night before, she was sitting around the house when she heard what sounded like fireworks outside. She ignored it until her husband called and instructed her to get the baby and get away from the windows. Her husband was a few blocks away at a police roadblock, being kept out of the neighborhood because one of their neighbors, who just so happens to be a big game hunter (he has a taxidermied elephant in his house!), had some sort of a mental breakdown and informed his neighbor (also a big game hunter with a taxidermied giraffe in his house) that they needed to prepare for the Zombies. Yes, the Zombiepocalypse was happening in Michigan. He then proceeded to shoot at what one can only assume were zombies and accidentally blow up his fuel tank during the process.

Trisha said they were up until 3am dealing with the police and such, and we all agreed it was a good reason to miss a boring retreat.