An Old Mariner's Tale

In a land far away and so long ago that nobody remembers anything important that might have happened beforehand, there was a crazy old man who took it into his head to build a great big boat.

When he began to build his gigantic boat no one really cared.  Everyone was building a giant something or other back then. They just let him build his boat and laughed a little behind his back for wasting so much money building a boat in the middle of a desert mountain range.

When the rainy season came he became a local celebrity for housing stray cats and ferrets in the now nearly-finished vessel. The people still thought he was crazy, but began to see him as quaint and  pretty much harmless.

Then the rainy season just kept going and as the desert seemed to wash away below the mountains, more animals came to seek shelter in the goofy old man's boat. The people began to complain about all the raccoons in the garbage, badgers in their compost patches, and elk droppings on their lawn.  They said it was a health risk to have so many animals in one place. They painted signs and wrote letters to the government, but the local officials had their hands full, what with the rising tides, and lack of boats...

Finally, the locals pooled their money together to hire a couple of legendary characters to rough up the old man and run him out of town "for the good of the children in such hard times". But  by the time their contracts were negotiated, the crazy old builder had barricaded the megalithic doors of the arc, and  most of the villagers had already been swept away by the rising flood...