The title provides a chuckle and makes you wonder how the members of Noah’s family
managed to restrain the natural reaction to a mosquito bite. Swat! Slap! Take that! Did the
female mosquito not eat for the duration of the voyage on the Ark?
Isn’t there a deeper philosophical point to the humour in the title? The story (aka Bible)
asks us to suspend our critical faculties and believe that it was possible for someone to build an
ark ample enough to contain two (Gen. 6:19) or was it seven (Gen 7:2) of every kind of animal
extant on the planet at that time. Who rounded them up? Who travelled to Australia and the
Americas to fetch the native animals who lived in the far reaches of the world? How long did it
take? Did Noah provide food for all the animals? Some of the animals are food for some of the
others. Perhaps this is why God changed His mind and told Noah to take seven of each creature.
Where did Noah store their excrement? Noah and his family (Gen. 7:11-13) must have been kept very busy
feeding and cleaning up after many of the animals as well as sailing the Ark.
The amusement in the title exposes the absurdity of the story and thereby the imaginary
nature of this Biblical offering. It calls into question the accuracy of the Word of God and
suggests a different genre for the supernatural stories in scriptural pages: mythology.
