A Bird’s Eye View of the Passover Story, Part 7

As I’ve shared before, my daughter loves birds, and one of her very favorite birds is the vulture. Yes, if you can imagine it, a five year old girl has the vulture as her favorite bird. One of her favorite games is to lie down on the grass and pretend she’s vulture food to see if the vultures will swoop down. Oh, the games that children invent!

I decided to lump 9 of the 10 plagues together in this version. I have a list of all 10 plagues at the end of the post for those who are interested. I also decided to have fun with this story. In the eyes of children, vultures are either mean or silly, so I chose silly.

Without further ado, let me introduce Gad and Ahaz, two griffon vultures who really enjoyed the bad times the Egyptians were having:

The Vultures’ Version of the Plagues

Gad, the griffon vulture, wheeled down from his circuit of the desert sky toward a non-descript carcass lying on the sand.  “Ahaz! Why didn’t you tell me you found some food?”

Ahaz munch greedily at the whatever-it-was. Gazelle? Donkey? Well, it didn’t matter much to Gad. He dove right in. At Gad’s fifth bite of the mystery meat, something funny shaped and tickly went down the wrong way. He hacked and gagged.

His friend stepped away from his lunch and rolled his eyes at him. “You been near Egypt today, Gad?”

Gad deposited an unidentifiable piece of mystery meat onto the desert sand. He looked at it as if it’d be able to tell him why it choked him.

“It ain’t gonna talk to ya, Gad,” Ahaz said. “I was talkin’ to ya.”

“What was you sayin’?” Gad stared at this unswallowable bite on the sand. Oh well. Some food just can’t be eaten. Then he remembered his friend Ahaz’s question. “Oh, yeah, I’ve been down by Egypt today.”

“Was it still dark?” Ahaz asked.

“Dark as ever dark could be,” Gad said.

“Creepy.” Ahaz dove back into his meal.

“Second day it’s been dark over there. But so much strange stuff’s been happenin’ there in Egypt, I’m hardly surprised anymore.” Gad contemplated another bite of the mystery meat, but it wasn’t anywhere near as appetizing as the food he remembered from the last couple of weeks. “Hey, Ahaz, you remember that first strange thing that happened? How the river water of the Nile all turned into blood? You remember?”

“How could I forget?” Ahaz exclaimed, pausing once more from his lunch. “All those fish died. I hadn’t had a decent meal in, well, weeks, then we’s had ourselves a buffet of sushi.”

Gad sighed contentedly as he recalled that day. “All you can eat sushi, too.”

“Then the frogs.” Ahaz looked almost giddy. “They went all throughout the houses and then died.”

“Ooh, yeah, they swept them up into whole piles of lovely rotting frog legs. What a delicacy. God was givin’ us vultures a treat then, wasn’t He?” Gad giggled. “I could eat like that again!”

“The lice were annoying, though,” Ahaz said.

“Those flies too. Annoying. One of them flew right up my nose.”

Ahaz rolled his vulture eyes. “I didn’t need to know that, Gad. Yuck.”

“Oh, but those dead cows and goats, they was good,” Gad said.

“Fast food burgers, vulture style.” Ahaz turned his beak toward the air as if he was relishing the memory. “But poor cousin Uzza, those burgers made his stomach hurt for days.”

“Pestilence, that what those animals had.” Gad was proud of the fact that he knew this big word, pestilence, that meant sickness. Most vultures didn’t know big words.

“Those boils on the people weren’t very interesting,” Ahaz said as he returned to his lunch.

Gad agreed. “They didn’t look very happy. And no extra food for us. Then came that awful hailstorm.”

“I haven’t been in Egypt since that day,” Ahaz said, “except for yesterday morning when I saw the darkness.”

“Well, I was there, Ahaz,” Gad said. “After the hail came these locusts. They ate pretty near everything that could be eaten, as far a people’s crops went. And then, when those locusts left, the darkness came. I can smell food in Egypt, but I’m so scared of the dark, I don’t want to go near there.”

“I wonder why all this is happenin’?” Ahaz asked.

“Well, the story I heard from the sparrows is that a man named Moses told Pharaoh to let the Hebrew slaves go free. But Pharaoh said no.”

“People can be so stubborn,” Ahaz said. He turned to take another bite of the mystery meat.

Gad figured he’d give the meat another try. He found another piece that tickled his throat and he hacked it up on the sand beside the first piece. “I know, they’s stubborn alright.”

“I wonder what will happen next.” Ahaz said. “Can’t be good if Pharaoh keeps bein’ stubborn like this.”

“I know, right?” Gad scooted over to another section of the mystery meat to finish his lunch.

A list of the 10 Plagues

Water turns to blood
Frogs
Lice
Flies
Pestilence on the livestock
Boils on the skin
Hailstorm
Locusts
Darkness for three days
Death of the first born

These plagues may have occurred over the span of a year.

Feel free to use this story as you teach your kids about Passover!