The Great Porcupine Debate

Son3:  Why did God give porcupines quills, when there was no death or destruction before the fall?

Mom:  Well, He had foreknowledge.

Son3:  No, He didn't create the world to fail.

Mom:  No, He didn't.  But he had foreknowledge that it would.

Now, this exchange continued far longer than I would have welcomed, if I hadn't been stuck here anyway, waiting for a film to finish loading.  Eventually, Son3 asked why God didn't give the mouse quills [for protection], so I told him the mice weren't elect, and the porcupines were.  I don't even believe in election (as set forth by Calvinists), so he knew I was messing with him.  Listen, I was pretty tired of being jabbed by a porcupine.

And I'd just finished that mouse whammy, when I realized Son4 had arrived on the scene and was standing next to Son3, listening-in and looking bumpy and bulbous in his middling parts, with the tail of his t-shirt folded up and clutched in his fists.  Our hens' egg production was way down while the temperatures were in the upper 90s and low 100s, yet it looked like quite a passel of fruits he was toting.  My eyes got big.

Mom:  Are those the eggs you got today!?

Son4:  No, I have the mumps.

First Son3's porcupines, and now deadpan humor from the baby Son4?

Nine.  There were nine eggs today, which isn't too bad, considering we have quite a few old freeloaders out there.  We continued this conversation with him imparting the news we'd gotten a dozen eggs the night before, but I was asleep before the count, and how the weather certainly must have been our recent problem.  About this time, Son3, who had silently excused himself when he lost my porcupine attention, reappeared with the answer to his doctrinal question, which he held while weighing-in on egg production:

Son3:  You know, chickens don't lay when they're in a molt.

Mom:  I know.  (Our chickens aren't in a molt, but I saw no reason to go head-to-head with Son3 again.)

Son3:  Know Dad's explanation of porcupines?

Mom:  What?

Son3:  So all the other animals could have pens.

He seemed happy with that, and my film had finished loading, so our debate ended.  Thanks, Charles.

Postscript:  Did elephants have itches before the fall?  I may be onto something here.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.  Genesis 1:24, 25