Noah's Awk

“And the Great Bird descended upon a star from the Heavens and mingled amongst the Cows of the Hilltop, and of their mingling begate the First of the Nephilim”

~ The notorious Chapter LXXXVI of the Lost Book of Enoch (that's chapter 536 in decimal -- it's a long book)

“There rose a Great Bird. The Bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them.”

~ The seventh chapter of the Book of Mozilla

“And God spake to him, and betold him to get him to the Great Awk, and upon it to load all creatures, and all plants, and all of his family, and all of his animals, and all of his lands, and a sufficiency of food for 40 years ”

~ Jubilees 5:21

“That was the biggest damn skeleton I ever seen”

~ preparator at the American Museum of Natural History

Awk!

Awk!!

In modern times the members of the Awk family of two legged winged and feathered homeothermic animals number four: the Awk, the Least Awk, the Great Awk, and the Greater Awk. Certain aviologists also recognize the Greater Least Awk and the Lesser Great Awk but most can't quite make them out, even under exceptionally good light. (We note in passing that there is also a small minority of etymologists who would prefer to call the whole family by the name of Auk but we shall have nothing further to say about them.)

The main characteristic all these avians hold in common, aside from their distinctive call, which is remarkably like the sound produced by an aged South Pacific islander with a frog stuck in his throat who has just dropped his end of the log canoe on his left big toe, and aside from the the fact that they are all extinct, is in fact their lack of flight.

Awk?

Another common characteristic of the common members of the Awk family is their appearance, which is something like an overinflated braunschweiger standing on one end.

In fact, however, while these "common" characteristics are shared by all modern members of the family, the largest member of the Awk clan was neither sausage shaped nor flightless. We know it was larger than modern awks, but exactly how much larger is not entirely clear.

Where Is It Now?

It isn't anywhere. Noah's Awk, as we already implied, is extinct. There is very little doubt about this. Smaller creatures, such as the Giant Ground Sloth, might be hiding out somewhere, lurking in cracks in the rock until the cryptobiologists and their heat sensing cameras leave the area, but it's hard to believe something the size of Noah's Awk could pull such a stunt (unless it's hiding in a so-far unnoticed crack the size of the Grand Canyon).

Sadly, it seems to have suffered the same fate as the largest members of most known warm blooded genera, such as the Irish Moose, the Mastodon, the Megatherion, the Brontosaurus, the Pink Elephant, and the Spruce Goose. Like them, Noah's Awk was hunted to extinction by primitive humans during the last phase of the Stone Age or, as it's known to paleontologists, the Upper Headstone Era.

None the less, the evidence of its former existence, and information about its size, comes from a number of sources, and is conclusive.

Evidence From the Pulpit

We recently had the great good fortune to hear a homily from a guest preacher on exactly this topic. He began,

"Hello, folks, I hope all is well with you. Today I'll be talking about Noah's Awk.

But I'd also like to say I'm sawwy I awwived late; I had no idear it would be so hawd to find a pawking place for my caw. It was even waws than back home in Bawston.

We know a lot about the size of the Awk. It was 374 talents long, 173 talents high, and weighed 452 cubits. A talent was between a centimetah and a meetah in length, and a cubit was between a gwam and a metwic ton, so we have a vewwy pwecise idear of the Awk's size. If a talent was 40.7487 centimetahs, then the Awk must have been exactly five hundwed feet long. Isn't that amazing?"

Biblical Evidence

The Bible, along with extrabiblical works from the same period, contains detailed descriptions of the largest known Awk, now commonly called Noah's Awk. There has been some confusion over exactly what the creature was, due to reliance by certain scholars on poor Aramaic translations of the original manuscripts. However, a careful examination of the proto-English scrolls on which the Bible was originally written reveals obvious cross-outs and erasures which led the Hebrew copyists to read the word ark in place of awk. In fact much of the account of Noah's flood makes no sense unless one realizes they were talking about an awk. Furthermore, Jubilees, Enoch, Mozilla, and the unpublished first edition of the King James Bible are all in agreement that Noah was to use an awk to transport the animals of the Earth (as well as any animals from nearby planets who might have wandered in).

Noah's Awk (reconstruction from fossil evidence)

Fossil Evidence

Fossils of Noah's Awk are not common. Several teeth were collected in the Nile River Valley which, according to Professor Sodwit of Cairo University, were from a large bird, which may have been between several and several hundred feet long, and was probably either pink or bright blue. Not all researchers agree with Dr. Sodwit about the color, however. In particular, a team of aviologists at Tehran University feel the teeth show that the bird was a uniform black color, and kept its head covered at all times.

The most remarkable fossil, however, is one found on top of Mount Ararat, where Noah is known to have crash landed (according to the account in given in the second volume of Josephus's Antiquities, and confirmed by passages in the second book of Jubilees and the fifth book of Enoch). It was discovered in 1953 by the Tel Alex expedition, which was jointly funded by Tel Aviv University and the Alexandria Library. A careful analysis of the skeleton has revealed a structure made of petrified wood pinned together with rivets made of aircraft grade aluminum alloy manufactured in about 3000 BC.

The First Tel Alex Expedition

When the expedition was originally proposed in 1950, by Alex Medford, a reshelver working at the Alexandria Library, the purpose was to test certain conclusions drawn from texts in the second Book of Jubilees. However, the startling results which came from the discovery of the initial Noah's Awk skeleton changed all that.

Once it was confirmed that the bird was held together with aircraft-grade aluminum rivets, there was speculation that the "bird" may not have been a bird at all, but rather an airplane. This makes a great deal of sense, save for the fact that the skeleton dates from some 3000 years before the invention of the airplane.

But this is in fact only a problem if there was no prior invention of the airplane. And so the Tel Alex expedition was reporpoised (or something) and continued south from the original dig site on top of Mount Ararat, to Cairo, where they boarded a balloon to look for the sources of the Nile, where (it was assumed) further clues would be found.

Once at Lake Victoria, the expedition turned west toward the Niger River, hoping that by following old trade routes, they would unearth evidence of the power grid and factories which would have been necessary to construct such a machine.

The Aluminum Smelter

Several weeks into the jungle trek, the base staff in Tel Aviv was electrified to hear the news that an ancient structure had been discovered which could only have been an aluminum smelter. Details were not forthcoming, however, as the expedition had turned aside to look for evidence of transmission lines leading to the site.

After several fruitless weeks spent searching for any power source which could have driven such an installation, the expedition leader reported that they had abandoned the search. After a careful reexamination of the site, they had realized that the smelter was driven by a combination of solar power, using giant lenses made of fused quartz, and fusion energy from a hot fusion plant located on the same site. When this was followed by news that absolute proof of the 3000 year old fusion plant's purpose had been found, there was wild celebration in Cairo and Tel Aviv. There were even rumors that certain members of the normally conservative staff at Tel Aviv had actually opened a bottle of champagne.

Prehistoric aluminum smelter, acc. Professor Fooblesnit

Luckily for the reputations of all concerned, no announcement was made, pending the return of proofs to the mouth of the Nile. When the "proofs" arrived, they turned out to consist entirely of a single photograph of the site, with a smeary comment on the back stating that this structure "... could not possibly be anything but an aluminum smelter". There was consternation, giving way to disappointment when it was learned that the expedition's leader, Johan Fooblesnit PhD, had been eating large quantities of the local mushrooms during the days leading up to the discovery of the aluminum smelter. His later assertion that the technology to build the smelter had been given to the Africans by friendly aliens who stopped in to stretch their legs before continuing on to a lunch date in the Catseye Nebula provided all the proof anyone needed that he was loopy, since it's well known that the Catseye wouldn't have existed yet at the date of the supposed visit. If his story were true it would have placed the building of the Awk no earlier than 800 BC, which is, of course, just plain silly. Consequently, even his firmly held claim that he had talked to the aliens in person last midsummer night didn't convince anyone.

The Second Tel Alex Expedition

Since it was now obvious that Noah's Awk was an animal, not a machine, a second expedition was sent up the Nile in the hope of finding additional skeletons. It was led once again by Professor Fooblesnit, who had promised he'd stay away from the mushrooms (and besides, he has tenure, so what can you do). The Professor once again decided the best way to cross the rough country leading to the sources of the Nile would be a balloon.

After fighting contrary air currents for several weeks, the expedition found itself slightly to the east of their intended target zone. They finally landed at what proved to be the head of the Ganges. Luckily for all concerned, however, after several days of digging holes and filling them up again (which is what paleontologists do, after all), they made the find of the century, in the form of a second complete Noah's Awk skeleton. Or so said Professor Fooblesnit. There has been some debate over exactly what they found, but whatever it was, it was shipped to the American Museum of Natural History (under the terms of a multilateral treaty between the Israeli, United States, and Russian governments which covered the correct handling of fossil remains of any and all extinct birds). The Egyptian and Indian governments wrote strongly worded letters protesting the move, but to no avail; once the skeleton had arrived at the AMNH (in 5963 "large corrugated" UPS boxes) there was little chance of anyone getting them to give it up, short of sending in a raiding party armed with machine guns.

The whole thing was then given over to a team of 73 preparators, who were tasked with putting it together in preparation for displaying it. After the best part of a year wrestling with the pieces, most of the staff had quit, and little progress had been made. We're hoping to see the skeleton on display just any day now; however, as of this writing, the skeleton has still not been fully assembled. In fact, after the long delay in piecing the bird together, a claim has surfaced that the cartons contained "nothing but a bunch of tree trunks". This has, however, been vehemently denied by Professor Fooblesnit, who says the rumor was started by a discontented preparator who quit after having a bone dropped on his toe.