More on HEARING the story

Last time I talked about hearing the story of baby Jesus escape to Egypt in a new way. This week I have been watching archived video casts from Bill Moyers' series on Faith and Reason. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/index.html

I was listening to the the interview with Ann Provost, a Belgian writer who was speaking of hearing the story of Noah from the perspective of those left behind. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/portraits_provoost.html

Her interest was particularly with the innocent such as children and animals. She spoke of a children's book by Peter Spier. In Mr Spier's "Noah's Ark", she described a series of illustrations of the animals left behind on the beach. At first you see that their feet are wet. The next frame shows all water except for the tip of the elephant's trunk and the giraffe's nostrils. And the next frame is just water. I have not seen the book yet and I am wondering about the effect these illustrations have on children. Perhaps the tone of the book, like other Bible stories for children (and adults) leads to a blind acceptance of this horrible fate.
She asks why didn't the adults or at least some of these "righteous" people give up their spot on the ark for a child? And some might say, why not leave the animals off and take many children?
Let me say here that I neither take the story of Noah's Ark literally, nor do I dismiss it. I don't know whether it is simply a story told by men trying to make sense of a past event, or a moral fable that gives us a way to think of disasters in general. I believe the Bible gives us opportunities to think about and relate to God and our world, but it is not a blueprint with exact measurements and descriptions of how things did or will happen.
Let's suppose that the effects of global warming, if allowed to continue, will lead to a disaster of Biblical proportions. Some people will listen to the warnings and prepare. Some will ignore them. Some will hope for a miracle.
Who would you save? And what would be the practicalities of your preparations. You would have to limit who and what you take by issues of space, needs and skills. If you filled your ark with children, who would care for them? If only animals, who would care for them? The ark is a mixture of saving family, saving those who can care for the ark and the animals, and those who can tend to the animals and plants after the water recedes and replenish the earth.
It is also possible that the story is about Noah's ark, and that other arks or method's of surviving also existed.
Because the story is presented as an event that God creates out of the blue, we also want God to wave a magic wand and save the innocent. Like global warming, or Hurricane Katrina, these disasters do not come out of the blue. We do have warnings. And the innocent suffer because we don't heed the warnings.