A friend of mine pointed out Nature Friend Magazine — this is a magazine about nature designed for children that doesn’t let silly science like evolution get in the way. They say their goal is to “stand on the truth of God’s Word and to present it as enjoyable fact while learning about the creatures God has created.” I was intrigued — as you might know, I’ve always been a fan of both nature and creationism. So I figured I’d write a little something for them from my own research. I sent it to them a while back, but haven’t heard any response yet.

It is night in the forest, and down below the stars, the trees, which were created fully formed into the universe and may show signs of adaptation in seed distribution that are only coincidence, are full of life. On the forest floor, mice scurry about among the underbrush, and again, the fact that these smaller plants feature larger root systems and smaller leaves is just smart thinking by our Creator, not actually because they have developed over time to take more of their nutrients from the ground rather than the rare sunlight that filters down to them. The mice themselves hunt for food on five-toed hands, and the fact that they share that many toes with not only humans and primates but also the bats that circle above them, is completely and totally happenstance.

But wait, what’s that flutter in the branches above? It’s an owl, out hunting for a midnight meal. The owl’s eyes face forward in its head, unlike most birds, which allows it to percieve depth better at night. But of course all owls have always had that adaptation, always, and the fact that their bone structure is closely related not only to all other birds but actually dinosaur fossils that have been found as well means nothing at all. One thing all owls don’t have, however, is a serrated edge on their flight feathers, that works to muffle the sound of their takeoff when pouncing on food. Which owls don’t have the sound-muting edges? Owls who hunt fish don’t have these feathers. But that’s probably not because owls who made noise and hunted things other than fish didn’t get to eat their prey — it’s probably just because God didn’t have time to serrate all of those feather edges.

This owl, because he hunts mammals rather than fish, has those serrated edges, and so you might think that the forest is nearly silent as he swoops from a branch to grab the unlucky mouse. You’d be wrong, though — the sounds of crickets chirping echoes all around. Crickets chirp by rubbing their wings together, and only male crickets chirp, either to attract a female or warn other males away. There’s one population of crickets that doesn’t chirp at all — on the island of Kauai in Hawaii, a parasitic fly started eating crickets that it could find via their chirping, and instead of normal crickets surviving and thriving, a strain of mutant crickets without large enough wings to chirp ended up becoming the dominant population.

But of course, that’s all — ummmm, I mean… God? The bible? Coincidence? Maybe? I give up.