Should I keep a zombie as a pet?

Michonne from AMC's The Walking Dead used "pet" zombies as a sort of camouflage. Keeping the undead as pets has real risks, however.[/caption] I understand where this question comes from. Most recently seen in AMC's The Walking Dead, we see people using zombies as a sort of camouflage to move around in zombie-infested areas. But we can go back to the films Shaun of the Dead and Fido as earlier examples of people “training” zombies to serve some purpose. And even now, in a zombie free world, we see people who like pets that bring a certain amount of danger to the table. For some, predatory creatures like tigers, bears and wolves are their idea of the best pets in the world. I do not own a great cat, a wild dog or any sort of bear and when the zombie apocalypse happens you won't find me with an undead pet either. In addition to being a poor practice in the operational risk management department, keeping a zombie as a pet has dangers beyond simply having the creature turn on you. Most zombie theorists agree that the monsters will be created through the spread of some as-yet-unknown pathogen. This could be a virus, some type of fungus or even a particularly virulent prion strain. Whatever the cause, the zombie itself would be a walking cluster of the contagion. Keeping them nearby would be tantamount to voluntarily subjecting yourself to quarantined medical patients. In addition to the social and religious implications, there are very real reasons why humans bury their dead. Even in the dark ages, people recognized that a corpse could transmit disease. As the bubonic plague spread across Asia and Europe, Mongol warriors would catapult the bodies of their fallen comrades over the walls of the cities they were besieging, perhaps the first example of biological warfare. Beyond that, it is popularly theorized that zombies cluster. There are a number of theories as to why they would do this, but the why is unimportant in itself. If any of the theories are correct then keeping zombies near you would only serve to attract more of them. In the case of Michonne and Shuan, the zombies kept close were dearly departed friends. It might be tempting to forgo the head shot when the zombie in question was once a loved one, but what you will have to remember is that the zombie is a corpse. Anything that made the person someone you cared about is gone. It's like The Walking Dead's Carol said upon finding her zombified daughter in Herschel's barn: “That's not my little girl. She died a long time ago.”