My mommy led us to the swarm of creatures and beasts, and all I could hear was noise. Lions roared. Dogs barked. Elephants trumpeted so loud it hurt my loud ears. Mommy said Miss Mouse and I were going to go on a spaceship to Mars. She said the sun had become so large and so red, that it would swallow the Earth our home completely. We had to go so there would be mice in the future. I asked Mommy if she was coming with us, and she shook her head.The stairs going into the spaceship went on forever, but every inch carried the feet of the animals, and the smell. I scurried as fast as my tiny feet would carry me, smelling the fish on the breath of the cat behind me. I wonder if the cat would still eat me if I gave it a breath mint.
Once I got inside, I followed the smell of cheese, and found a hunk of cheese just for me in a tiny little hole in one of the inner walls. Noah and his family really thought about everyone of us animals when they built the ark. Me and Miss Mouse shared the hunk of cheese every day we were on the spaceship.
We made so much noise, day after day, that Noah and his family couldn't sleep at first. When the dogs went to sleep the cats would wake up and start howling. Japheth spent a lot of his time keeping the animals from eating each other. I overheard the hyenas giggling a lot about which animals would become dinner first. But we all learned to eat veggies and milk and cheese (though I liked that already.) A few animals missed meat a lot, namely Mr. Cat.
The cat still chased me up the rafters, through the air vents, and even across the control system. Finally Noah, the captain of the spaceship grabbed the cat by the scruff on the back of his neck, pulling him high above me in the air.
"What are you doing, Mr. Cat?" Noah asked, not looking very happy.
Mr. Cat just shrugged, and smiled as if he'd been taking a bath this whole time, and not hunting mice.
"Don't you know? Without him and Miss Mouse, there will be no mice on the new world?"
I don't even remember what Mr. Cat said back to him. All I saw at that moment was the whiskers on my mommy's face, and that I would never see them again. My ride to Mars suddenly seemed lonely, though Miss Mouse came with me. Miss Mouse couldn't replace mom though.
We watched Mars get bigger in our round windows. Both me and Miss Mouse could fit on the window sill, Noah and his family had made it so much bigger than us. Mars kept growing as our wide eyes looked on. Soon our new home was bigger than even the windows, and maybe even bigger than the ship. Miss Mouse said that it would have to be bigger than our spaceship, otherwise we wouldn't be able to land on it.
Mars was orange, like a good chunk of cheddar cheese. Maybe Mars wouldn't be so bad, even if Mommy didn't get to see it.
And then we landed, on Olympus Mons, or as Ham, Noah's son called it: Mt. Olympus. My tail wagged excitedly as I waited to leave the ship. Some of the birds got in a line, already ready to stretch their wings and fly. Then we heard the Noah's voice on the intercom.
"Sorry, no heading out on Mars, today, the atmosphere is still too thin."
I looked at Miss Mouse, and she gave me the same confused look back. We then looked at Mr. Turtle, since he always looked like he knew what he was talking about, even though he talked really slow.
"We...have..." He began, and I glanced at Miss Mouse impatiently. "....to wait..." I counted 15 other creatures walking by. "....until the Red Sun..." Ten more passed me. "....melts the..." Five. "....ice on...the surface..." Three. "....of Mars...and create the sky." He always talked so slow!
Noah sent out a probe to test the air in the sky. It floated around Mars for several days, and came back, with results that Noah didn't like. We waited longer. Then Noah released it again, and the probe didn't come back, instead it gave Noah a message saying the air was okay now. Every animal and person on the spaceship danced, stomped, roared, and sang, everyone was so happy. We were so happy that the spaceship shook from all the noise and dancing.
A week later all of us held our breath as Noah released the air locks on the doors, though we knew there was air outside. Red sunlight hit us, making the ground seem red as a cherry, instead of orange. White clouds turned pink when they passed in front of the sun. Down below the walkway, I heard the roar of the ice-cold water in a river.
The hummingbirds hummed happily when they saw flowers growing in the ground. Most of us hurried past the altar with the animal sacrifices, even though we knew we were "unclean" as Shem called it, and we were safe.
The hippos immediately took to the water, near the new springs. And from the springs came a rainbow, a beautiful rainbow. A voiced boomed from the sky.
"I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that was with you-the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you-every living creature from earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the fires of the sun; never again will there be a fire to destroy the earth."
All of us animals looked up at the sky in awe, and in awe of the voice that came from it. "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the geysers, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth on Mars. Whenever I light the volcanoes underneath Mars and the rainbow appears in the geysers, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the sun become a fire to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the geysers, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth on Mars."
God, as Noah and his family called him, finished talking with this: "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth."
