Parting Glances: (No, not THE Supremes)

Last December's tsunami — that took the lives of 170,000 people in Southern Asia, and prompted a caring world to raise millions of dollars for aid and assistance — was not without its strange I-told-you-so fishmongers.
Seems there are those who believe lives might have been spared if warning signs from heaven above and the animal kingdom below were heeded. According to some — quote, unquote, better-late-then-never soothsayers — there's a precedent — both upward and downward — for saying so, especially now that the tsunami has faded to a muted whisper.
As far as heaven is concerned: according to Sri Lanka Muslim fundamentalist Mohamed Faizeen, a DigitalGlobe Quick Bird satellite picture taken just seconds after the tsunami smashed into that country's west coast spelled out the name of Allah. (Watch for possible e-Bay bidding.)
"This [picture] clearly spells out Allah's name in Arabic," claims Faizeen, citing the shape of the waves — a gigantic E figure on its side. "Allah signed his name. He sent it as punishment. This comes from ignoring His laws." So much for Allah, The Merciful.
Faizeen says that after seeing the picture and getting the proffered nudge of the Divine Elbow to his rib cage, he fled the area and his unworthy life was spared. (How's that for chutzpah, to borrow a cocklebur from Yahweh's burning bush.)
According to scientists the tsunami, which hit one day after Christmas — leaving You Know Who off the hook — was the result of an undersea earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale off the west coast of northern Sumatra. (Neptune, when not a-snooze in the briny deep, packs a real pagan wallop.)
International Baptist Missionary President Jerry Rankin — not to be outdone in total clunkhead insensitivity and ding bat dunce-capping — observed at a March 2005 IBM gathering, "In a matter of moments a quarter of a million people were swept into hell." He adds that their deaths should increase the urgency Southern Baptists feel for "finishing the task" of Christ's great commission (i.e., send more locust brigade missionaries into the waterlogged trenches).
"Make no mistake, the entire world is being convulsed by a religious struggle," adds 700 Club faith-carpetbagger Pat Marion Robertson. "The struggle is whether the moon god of Mecca known as Allah is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, God of the Bible, is supreme.
Apologies to Diana Ross.
(It's no wonder that Fundies find themselves not welcome in so many places around the globe. They're often ignored, persecuted, and — don't say you weren't warned, kiddo — drawn and quartered. Yet in their unmitigated SS "Gott mit uns" arrogance they persist.)
As for the animal kingdom, evolution has given some species a sixth sense for escaping impending cataclysmic doom. (As early as 373 BC historians observed that just before the Greek city of Helice was wiped out by an earthquake, rats, weasels, and snakes packed up their beaded bags and left.)
And hours before last year's tsunami elephants fled to high ground. In doing so they saved their keeper's (mahouts) lives. Ah, yes: Ganesha, the trumpeting Hindu elephant god, looks after his own kith and kin, along with bats, flamingoes, buffalos, and the occasional wagtail dog browsing foredoomed city streets.
According to Fortean Times magazine (April 2005), "In 1975 the Chinese authorities successfully evacuated the city of Haicheng several hours before a major earthquake struck. The decision was based on observations of animal behavior and saved 90,000 lives."
Thank God for Mother Nature. She's nobody's fool.