Could AJ’s parents have been the victim of such disease?
Or do ponies turn into trees when they “die” like how monsters in Monster Ranchers turn into Locked Disks when they expire?
The way the book shows how the disease cycles. It is implied to be a parasitic.
Seeing as how tree dense that abandoned swamp village is. Begs us to wonder how many of those vegetation were formerly inhabitants of the village.
This is a dark disease when you consider there wasn’t always a cure, then it was found but lost. And a pony alone is doomed. If Daring Do were in the middle of a deep jungle and then got infected, she’s be a tree for sure.
@PonyPon
Yep. The Divine Comedy actually had something similar, where people who commited suicide are sent to the 7th Circle of Hell and are turned into trees. They cannot move, but they can talk, but only if a branch is broken off by the harpies who live in the forest of suicide.
as has been said before, swamp fever is actually a real disease that horses catch, and while it doesn’t kill them by turning them into trees, there’s no cure, it’s often fatal, and the prognosis always involves either euthanasia or a lifetime in quarantine. at least with the fictional disease zecora still had a fighting chance; had she caught the real disease a lot of russian childhoods would’ve ended prematurely today.
