There’s never been an oceanic trip in the history of the world more terrible than that of the patriarch Noah. Not even the Titanic.  Can you imagine what those forty days and forty nights were like aboard a creaky boat in the company of the most crowded possible zoo? Can you even think about the dangers of contagion and poisoning posed by these insects and reptiles? Or the debris left by elephants, rhinoceros and hippos that virtually covered the floor like a rug? The erotic adventures of macaques and porcupines? The fights between wolves and tigers, who were at each other like dogs and cats? And the worst of all: the cacophony of noises these creatures emitted during the endless five and a half weeks they floated in the waters of universal flooding.  

I suppose that while the cats  hissed, scared by the barking dogs, the wolves howled in response to the terrifying tigers’ roar. The sheep, nervous about feline presence baahed and baahed and baahed; the very scared hare whined; the deer bellowed and the hyenas, who complained about everything, brayed and brayed and brayed.

The concert began early in the morning with school-age animals and their characteristic noises. In the kids’ corner, the piggies came to oink, the calves to bleat, the lambs to bleat, the chickens to chirp and the capybara pups to chatter.  

And around 10 each morning, the talkative birds celebrate their daily gossip fest. The parrots squawk; the parakeets chirp; the cockatoos screech and the macaws scream.  Distraught with the commotion, the elephants flap their large ears and trumpet over and over again to demand silence. Cowardly and disrespectful, the monkeys howl and do monkey stuff, which is what one would expect from a monkey.

Deep was the bellowing of the oxen, deep the rumbling of the bison and the whinny of the zebras, but even deeper the snoring of the camels and, now that we’re in depth of deepness, the whales’ song is deeper than anything else.  From the stables, the mares panted; from its nest, the hens cackled; from the highest pole, the storks clattered their bills; from the garden, the bees buzzed; from the blue pool, the swan  honked and from just about every corner, one could hear the donkeys’ choppy brays.

In the midday heat, the crickets erupted into their incessant chirping, to which the cicadas responded by rubbing their legs together in a shrilling outburst. The quails joined in with a high-pitched cackle. The larks with their trills invited the crow to croak; the cranes honked, the swallows twittered and the sky filled with the loud din of birdsong; the relentless parroting of the parrots; the cooing of the doves; the peeps of the pigeons; the chirrups of the sparrows; the chattering of the magpies and the chirping of the little birds. The winged creatures were having a blast. Nothing like a duck to quack, like a peacock to shriek, like a turkey to gurgle, like a partridge to cluck, chatter and mock. Nothing like a penguin to applaud. Nothing like a serpent to whistle.  

At dusk, the sound of forest animals took over. The leopards roared, the owl hooted; the wild pigs grunted, the bears growled, the bucks groaned, the coyotes snarled, the frogs croaked and the foxes yelped.

But the dawn concert was yet to take place, and Noah and his family had already listened to the racket forty times. Howling, buzzing, mooing, bawling, bellowing, roaring, trumpeting, bleating, grunting, twittering and snorting blended together in an indiscriminate choir. And then there was the voice of the patriarch who, accompanied by a giraffe (the only animal that does not make any sound), cried to the heavens:  

—”Dear Lord, put an end to this, according to Thy will: order the rain to stop, let us get off the boat and, above all, shut up these beasts!”  

God finally took pity on the loyal old man. When the huge ship ran aground at Mount Ararat, and all the animal species were saved—including the humans—Noah could finally set foot on land. They say he took the cotton out of his ears and founded the first translation academy ever (to put names on the sounds he had heard) and drank a barrel of wine. Who could blame him?