[To follow the True History from the beginning, click on "First Entry"]
Nothing new today--7 of 10 American adults already realize that what I'm about to tell you really did happen...
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Contrary to popular belief and modern children's books, God commanded Noah to bring not two, but seven, of each living creature into the Ark – one healthy male and six females of every species on the planet, from the humble ant to the majestic moose, and seven of every kind of bird. It was only the "unclean" (non-kosher) animals that got saved as a monogamous couple – such beasts as camels, canaries, dogs, ferrets, kangaroos, lions, monkeys, pigs, possums, rats, skunks, and snakes (Gen. 7:2-3).
The Lord instructed Noah to save even the lowly earthworm from destruction, and Noah obeyed; but as a man of God, he was not amused by the position those two worms got themselves into! – okay, he did watch them go at it, but his interest was strictly scientific. He mentioned to Mrs. Noah, several times, that what the earthworms did is something that he and she would not be trying aboard the Ark, so don't even think about it!
But there was no real danger, because Mrs. Noah had not been thinking about it.
Otherwise, Noah found the Lord's clean v. unclean rules seemed somewhat arbitrary and bewildering, for this was still a thousand years before God issued that whole set of laws to Moses. Many of what the Lord suddenly called "unclean" animals seemed, to Noah, quite tidy, such as the domestic cat; and many of the Lord's "clean" animals seemed less so, such as the locust, katydid, cricket, and grasshopper, insects which the Lord described as "meat for thee" but which Noah's wife flatly refused to serve for dinner.
Noah also wondered why each "clean" male beast got to have six females on board while each "unclean" male got to have only one. While building the Ark, Noah bathed daily, hoping that He, too, might be allowed to have six clean females on board, and six for each of his three sons; but Noah was afraid to ask the Lord for such a favour, because he did not want God to kill him.
Starting seven years before the Flood – and this would be a great idea for the ultimate Walt Disney "based-on-a-true-story" animal film – sheepdogs fanned out across the Earth to round up the various species for Noah's Mesopotamian zoo; assisted by highly trained hawks, who shepherded the birds into position; and pigeons, who carefully collected the worms, grubs, and insects.
When the Ark was finally finished and covered with pitch inside and out, God gave Noah exactly one week (not counting Saturday) to get all of those animals and creeping things and birds on board (Gen. 7:4).
Noah was faced with a logistical nightmare: How to pack? He was all for biocultural diversity, but he was shaken to the core when he discovered just how many kinds of life dwelt on his own planet – some twenty million species. Fenced corrals now stretched across the Mesopotamian desert as far as the eye could see in every direction, and the Ark itself was overshadowed by the mountain of birdcages and insect cartons that stood alongside. Suffering a momentary crisis of faith, Noah wondered if a fleet of Arks could hold a year's supply of elephant food; much less food for the rest of the animals; much less the animals.
There were strategic considerations. If Mrs. Noah or one of the kids should be bitten, say, by a mosquito, and slapped it, the entire Culicidae family could be forever wiped out. All passengers, high and low, had to be protected: Noah could not put lions in the same berth with gazelles, nor elephants with mice. Nor could he house a male and a female of the same species together in the same berth, or they would just fornicate. (Killing, and eating, and fornicating was all that some animal species, in those days, could think about.)
But Noah had no time to be fussy. Finally, he just crammed them in, deck by deck, until the Ark was packed as tightly with live animals as a modern day suitcase with shirts and underwear. Noah said: "Let the Lord sort 'em out."
As the first storm clouds appeared on the horizon, Noah's vast Mesopotamian corrals stood empty, except for a number of dinosaurs ("behemoths") with "tails as big as trees" (Job 40), who could not be made to fit on board. The dinosaurs didn't care, they were too busy fornicating. So God killed the dinosuars, with an asteroid (Isaiah 11:8, 27:1, 30:6, 34:7).
– L.
(Tomorrow: I just hope everyone knows how to swim!)
