On the eleventh morning
Japheth burst into the cabin:
‘Dreadful news, everybody, the tigers
have eaten the bambanolas!’
‘Oh, not the bambanolas,’ cried Mrs Noah.
‘But they were my favourites,
all cuddly and furry,
and such beautiful brown eyes.’
Noah took her hand in his.
‘Momma, not only were they cute
but they could sing and dance
and speak seven languages.’
‘And when baked, their dung was delicious,’
added Shem wistfully.
Everybody agreed that the earth
would be a poorer place without the bambanolas.
Noah determined to look on the bright side.
‘At least we still have the quinquasaurapods.’
‘Oh, yes, the darling creatures,’ said his wife.
‘How would we manage without them?’
On deck, one quinquasaurapod was steering,
cooking, fishing, doing a crossword
and finding a cure for cancer.
The other was being stalked by a tiger.
Bad Day at the Ark (II)
One evening while the family were at vespers
From the deck came the sound of furtive whispers.
Impatiently, Ham waited for ‘Amen’
Then crept up to investigate with Shem.
Like phantoms in the moonlight, glistening with slime
Two giant slugs were ranting, horns swaying in time:
Sluggy deluge sluggy dark, Sluggy voyage sluggy ark
Sluggy seasick sluggy sneeze, Sluggy splinters sluggy fleas
Sluggy Noah sluggy wife, Sluggy boring sluggy life
Each feculent slug was as huge as a rhino
And smelled of old corpses rolled up in lino.
Clammy, putrescent, oozing mucus and goo
The Creator’s revenge locked one night in the loo.
Sluggy bellow sluggy bleat, Sluggy twitter sluggy tweet
Sluggy roar sluggy meow, Sluggy bow sluggy wow
Sluggy quack sluggy moo, Sluggy sink the sluggy crew
‘Not only ugly, out of tune and glutinous
These beasts are revolting,’ said Shem, ‘and mutinous.
Let’s do the deed and do it big time
You get the sea-salt, I’ll get the quick-lime.’
Sluggy quick-lime, sluggy salt, Sluggy human’s sluggy fault
Sluggy melting, sluggy pain, Endangered species down the drain
No one loves a sluggy slug, Gluggy gluggy glug glug glug
Noah, on hearing of the creatures’ cruel demise,
Summoned his sons and frowning said, ‘Now guys
Our job is to save life, so you’re way off the mark
To make a floating abattoir out of an ark.
This cannot go unpunished, and so tonight,
No custard with your apple pie, all right?
Let that be a lesson,’ adding with a smirk,
‘Giant slugs? Good riddance. Now get back to work.’
Bad Day at the Ark (III)
‘They’ve struck again,’ said Mrs Noah, disconsolate.
‘A Duck-billed Reindeer this time.
A doe. She had no chance, poor mite.
Sucked dry and covered in pollen,
she lay on deck like a squeezed shammy leather,
little Bambi, whimpering at her side.’
‘Those Killer Butterflies will have to go,’
said Noah. ‘With a wing-span of twelve metres
and heads the size of mammoths,
they are a liability to everyone on board.
Compared to these Cabbage White vampires
the Giant Bees were pussycats.’
‘And functional,’ pointed out his wife,
squeezing her toes into the luxurious pile
of the black and yellow striped carpet.
‘Mind you, those diaphanous wings
would make a smashing pair of window-blinds
for the nursery. Shall I give the lads a call?’
She picked up the skull of a ring-tailed
maraca and shook it vigorously.
Ham, Shem and Japheth came running,
armed to the back teeth and clad
in the bright red armour of the recently boiled
(and now extinct) Giant Lobsters.
‘Death to the blood-sucking lepidoptera,’
they cried (in Hebrew), and ran on deck.
But the beasts were nowhere to be seen.
Having mistaken the distant horizon
for a washing-line, they had fluttered off
to perch upon it and perished. (Honest.)
So Mrs Noah did not get the window-blinds
she had set her heart on for the nursery.
But, by way of compensation, her husband
made a fine set of rockers for the cot
using a pair of gleaming ivory tusks
taken from a Giant Sabre-toothed Hamster.
Bad Day at the Ark (IV)
It occurred first to the lemon-haired manatee
(sole survivor of a pair of poolside-dwelling bipeds)
as she and a male barefaced baboon
were in hiding from Shem, who, armed with a carving-knife
fashioned from the horn of a unicorn, was scouring the ship
in search of something tasty and intelligent for supper.
‘If this voyage lasts much longer,’ she whispered,
‘there will be no animals left to do God’s bidding
once the flood subsides.’ The baboon nodded,
letting his hand fall on to the silken flesh of her thigh.
The manatee removed his hand gently but firmly.
‘I think we should call a meeting, don’t you?’
The survivors convened that same night in the empty
brontosaurus basket, and what a sorry sight they were:
Gone the fabulous gryphon, the wingèd giraffe.
Gone the prairie dolphin, the golden-voiced terrapin.
‘I hate to say this,’ confessed the manatee,
‘but I really think that God messed up on this one.
To entrust the infamous Noahs with the task
of building an ark and leading us all to safety
was asking for trouble. I mean, just look at them:
purple-scaled, one-eyed, cloven-hoofed non-entities.
They can talk, yes, and they’re house-trained
but in terms of evolution they’re… they’re…’
She looked to the barefaced baboon for inspiration.
He winked and wiggled his long tongue lasciviously
‘… they’re way down the line.’ The animals yelped,
roared and belched in approval. ‘We must jump ship
before reaching dry land, otherwise they’ll carry on
where they left off, and consume us at the rate of knots.’
As if on cue, the wind dropped suddenly, and the rain
pitter-petered out. ‘It has to be tonight,’ she warned.
While the baboon and a few of his best primates
barricaded the Noahs into their sleeping-quarters,
the upturned shell of a blue turtle-whale was lowered
upon the now calm waters, boarded and sailed away.
The Ark and all therein perished, but the giant shell
was washed safely ashore, its precious cargo intact.
The animals gave thanks, and then wearily but joyfully
set off to the four corners of the earth to breed and multiply.
And last to leave were the new Adam and Eve –
The lemon-haired manatee and the barefaced baboon.