Itsy Bitsy Biblical Scholars

A few weekends ago, I made a quick visit to the land of my nativity to see my most babiest of brothers, his sweet wife, my Idaho niblets, their sweet mom, and my elderly parents. It was a busy 24 hours full of fun adventures, but the most fun by far had to be our trip to the zoo.

Kenna and Kylie spent their formative years exploring the zoo, so once they got through the gates they were pretty much just blurs as they ran from exhibit to exhibit, checking on all of their old pals. They LOVE the zoo.

 Kristie, on the other hand, was seeing the zoo for the first time. She did a lot of looking around and seemed to do a lot of deep thinking. Since the only other animals she has spent time with have been her siblings, perhaps she was pondering the idea of using cages at home? You can almost hear her thinking, "Hey....that could work!"

And then there was Bubba.

The Mighty Bubbs seemed to have a great time (especially once his good behavior earned him early parole from the back-pack-leash-of-shame), until we got to the lions. Instead of hollering to the animals and trying to get the closest view possible like he had at every other exhibit, Bubba held his tongue and kept his distance.

His mom picked him up so he could get a better view, then she said something to the effect of, "Aren't those lions neat?" But Bubbs vigorously shook his head in disagreement. In the photo below, she is trying to convince him that the lions are "nice", while he is adamantly disagreeing, "They are MEAN!"

I thought it was kind of funny that the lions made Fearless Bubba nervous. Later that day, I wondered aloud if Spider Man or Iron Man had ever faced off against lions in any of the cartoons the little guy likes to watch. Perhaps one of his heroes getting a sound beating from a lion could convince Bubba that they were bad?

It wasn't until I was driving home the next morning when another thought struck me upside the head. I remembered that Bubba wasn't Bubba's ACTUAL name! His real name is DANIEL, which put me onto a whole other train of thought. I started to wonder if, perhaps, the story of Daniel in the Lion's den had been mentioned in nursery recently?

Or, more likely perhaps, had his older sisters learned the story in primary and then retold it to their little brother... maybe late at night in their darkened room. Might they have"forgotten" to specify that it was a particular Daniel who got tossed into the lions' den, or"accidentally"  implied that ALL Daniels are favorite chew toys of that particular breed of cat? That might explain his reaction at the zoo.

And there is precedent in our family for older siblings getting a little confused when it comes to younger siblings with biblical names.

Case in point: When I went to help out at Jenny and John's for a week after Jonah was born, little Bentley can home from Sunbeams and informed me that we need to go outside and "Kill the Whaley Fish." Being the intelligent and articulate woman that I am, I responded, "Huh?"

Bentley then went on to explain that in primary he had learned that the Whaley Fish wanted to eat his new baby. So, because Bentley is a good big brother and I am an easily amused aunt, we grabbed some weapons and headed outside where we kept watch for that sneaky, baby-eating Whaley Fish. 

We might never know if Daniel was adverse to the lions because he was worried he might end up in the same hairy situation as his biblical namesake, or if he was just remembering that Spider Man had  gotten his behind kicked by a cartoon lion at some point. But either way, it made for a pretty funny conversation to watch at the lion exhibit. 

And at least he doesn't have a problem with stone lions. 

Which one is really the King of Beasts?