Noah, the Beavers Are Eating a Hole in the Ark!

There are those times when it seems you are in the middle of a storm, maybe even surrounded by the wasteland. You’re holding on tight as your ship is rocking back and forth. Your faith is taking a beating. You’re holding on to trust, and maybe you can make it to the other side… and then you hear it: a shrill cry echoing through your little ship, and trust and faith seem to disappear. You hear it again, knowing it is not a dream, but yet another crisis. Will they ever stop?

“Noah, the beavers are eating a hole in the ark!”

Great Grandpa Shem slid into his rocking chair. Finally, some peace and quiet, he thought. That blessing from God, “to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,” carried with it a definite flip side. He had wondered if the house would ever be quiet again. He tried to count the years of noise, going back to the sounds of the hammer and saw, and the crashing of falling trees. God had told his Daddy Noah to start building a big boat. They didn’t even know what a boat was, or rain for that matter. He recalled the taunts and jeers. After the last nail was driven, God sent them all into the ark; and then there was the constant noise of animals and birds. “Old MacDonald would have gone nuts,” he muttered to himself. “A moo, moo here, and quack, quack there…” He shuddered and quickly shifted his memories before the headaches returned. Then came the thunder and the rain; what a racket that brought! And after the boat ride was over, came the babies…but this afternoon, all was quiet. There were so many kids and grandkids now, he could not keep any of them straight. His wife said she could, but that was the gift grandmas receive, not grandpas.

He heard the bellow of a camel through his closed eyes, and it caused him to shudder; opening one eye, he saw the little caravan approaching. Little was an understatement. “Be fruitful and multiply,” he muttered… his wife stepped out onto the porch.

“Oh good, the kiddos are coming over,” she said. “Looks like all of them. I will go grab a steer and get some dinner going—you entertain!”

Great Grandpa Shem straightened up; he knew what was coming next: the onslaught. Like waves on the beach came the kids, and the grandkids, and lastly the great grandkids. They flocked around him, the younger ones fighting for a position on his lap. One of his sons, Aram, smiled and called out to Uz, his grandson, who was wandering slowly across the yard. He always liked Uz, an easy name to remember. Another kid, a great grandkid, Eber, came running up, holding his daddy Salah’s hand.

Then the questions began, the demand for a story, and it was always the same story. “Great Grandpa Shem, tell us about the ark, all the animals, and the flood… pleazzzzzzzz!”

Shem reared back in his chair, and through the mist of time began to tell of the Ark. “I remember it like it was yesterday…me and your uncles Ham and Japheth, we were helping daddy with the ark. We were loggers first, then carpenters, and finally sailors; and it all started when God came to your great, great Grandpa Noah. The world had become a wasteland. No one worshiped God, no one sought to help others, or to do good. Everyone was just wicked…”

He continued with the story of how they had constructed the great vessel, and how God had brought the animals. Not all of them were full grown, he explained; there was no need to bring in a full-grown elephant when a young one would survive longer and have a longer reproductive life. Plus, there was the need to store up food for the various beasts. It was here that his wife passed by the door, stopping to listen to the story, a twinkling in her eye. “Don’t forget to tell them about the beavers!” she shouted, walking back towards the kitchen. That set off all the kiddos; now everyone wanted to know about the beavers. But Great Grandpa Shem tried to move on.

“Let me tell you about your Uncle Japheth and the monkey,” he offered, but to no avail. The kids were demanding to know about the beavers. And so, Great Grandpa Shem began the tale, a tale that always brought him a sense of embarrassment—the story of the beavers and the ark.