Noah’s Ark: A Spot of Bother with the Beasts
It is a truth universally acknowledged—well, at least among those who have had the misfortune of dealing with giraffes at close quarters—that a chap can only endure so much hullabaloo before he begins to lose his customary sang-froid.
And so it was that Noah, an affable old bean of the patriarchal persuasion, found himself up to the neck in dashed awkward circumstances. There had been rain. Rather a lot of it. The sort of meteorological enthusiasm that left one in no doubt that someone up there was taking a firm line on matters.
Thus, Noah, a man of considerable spirit when confronted with divine memos, had gathered his household and a rather mixed bag of fauna into a vessel of his own construction. But as any chap who has ever found himself attempting to herd so much as a single goat into a suitable enclosure will tell you, the logistics of accommodating a positively Wagnerian ensemble of wildlife were—how shall we put this?—a bit of a bally nuisance.
Matters came to a head one soggy morning when Shem, the eldest of Noah’s offspring and a fellow with a worrying tendency to take things seriously, knocked at his father’s cabin door.
“Father,” said Shem, in the grave tones of one who has just discovered a hippo in the pantry, which—given present circumstances—was not an impossibility, “I regret to inform you that the lions have eaten the peacocks.”
Noah, who had been rather looking forward to a quiet breakfast, sighed.
“Damn and blast, Shem. I specifically told the lions to keep to their quarters.”
“They claim a misunderstanding.”
“They always do. And where is your brother Ham?”
“He is attempting to separate the ostriches from the camels.”
“Oh, good. That should go off without a hitch.”
At this juncture, Mrs. Noah entered, wearing the expression of a woman who has, for the umpteenth time, had to remind a rhinoceros that the corridor is not a latrine.
“Noah,” she said, in the tone that tends to precede a man discovering he has left a vital part of his person caught in a mangle, “I have had enough of these elephants. If I catch them one more time in my airing cupboard, there will be trouble.”
At that moment, the ark lurched in a manner that suggested an overambitious hippopotamus had just attempted a pirouette on the starboard side.
Noah pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right. That’s it. I’m going up top. If the dove hasn’t found land soon, I’m going to start throwing things overboard.”
“Not the elephants?” asked Mrs. Noah, with a hopeful gleam.
Noah hesitated. “Not unless we can convince them to go voluntarily.”
And so, with the ark listing alarmingly under the strain of its own menagerie, Noah strode to the deck, where, in the distance, the dove was flapping back towards them.
In its beak—a small, green olive branch.
“Well, well,” Noah murmured, as the ark rocked beneath him. “There’s a turn-up for the books.”
Below decks, the lions ate another peacock.
