Dear Farmers and Black Market Animal Traders of 2300 BCE:
My name is Noah, son of Lamech and ninth descendent of Adam. I am six hundred years old and I need to look at your animals’ pee-pees. Long story short, God’s sending a colossal wall of water to cleanse creation of wickedness, which means I’ll for sure need to take a peek at basically every species of animals’ nuggins and noodles within the next, like, two or three weeks.
To be clear: this isn’t something I want to do or have dreamed of doing ever since I was a tiny prophet in my mother’s arms and first laid eyes upon the sumptuous underbelly of our neighbor Jehoshabeath’s prized meat hog, and I’m definitely not making this whole flood thing up so I can go around the lands of Ararat and score a gander at a bunch of titillating animal down-unders.
I promise this whole thing is totally by-the-books, God-told-me-to-do-it stuff. I just need two of every animal in existence, including those living on the other side of the flat world in jungles and swamps I don’t know about. Most importantly, I need one girl wee-wee and one boy pee-pee, which will require I take a long, contemplative gaze at every single beastly undercarriage in God’s earthly kingdom.
You might have some questions, such as:
Q: Am I trained to sex every species of animal on Earth?
A: Absolutely not.
Q: Do I think I can probably do my best to distinguish an innie from an outie?
A: Sure thing.
Q: Is it possible I’ll fail to differentiate between a fish with a hot dog and a fish with a bun, and nobody will ever enjoy a delicious miso-ginger-glazed salmon fillet in some ridiculous postdiluvian future where people consume things other than bread, wine, and the blood of their morally bankrupt grandchildren?
A: Yes, totally possible. Not saying it’s not.
Q: Is it also possible I have no idea what any of these animals eat, and they’ll either gradually starve to death or begin violently devouring each other within forty-eight hours, resulting in a total bloodbath nightmare scenario in which I will be forced to drown my family and then myself to spare us the agony of being eviscerated by a smoking hot lady cheetah?
A: I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?
Again: I possess no zoonotic or veterinary training whatsoever. Biology isn’t even a thing yet. You have to trust me on this one because sometimes I just do things. I’m kind of that guy.
One example: I recently built an enormous wooden ark without any carpentry or boat-building skills to speak of—I don’t even know math. Full disclosure? I can’t even read. I’m having one of my slaves write this for me. Is the ark riddled with cracks and holes? Maybe. Did I spend three days installing a light-up disco dance floor and no time building feeding troughs? That’s between myself, God, and the future of creation. The point is: I’m Noah. Out of all the dudes in the world, God chose me. This is why I really, truly, super bad need to cop a quick glance at all your animals’ nibbles and pibbles.
Perhaps you don’t believe me. Or maybe your livestock are a little shy. Doesn’t matter. One way or another, I will be looking at every earthly creature’s meat basket and rump splitter to make sure our planet remains a diverse ecosystem once the holy floodwaters literally destroy everything in existence except for myself, my entire immediate family, and my aforementioned tricked-out animal party ship.
Blessed Is Our Lord and All His Sizzling Hot Animal Creations,
Noah