Hippogriffs

Last night I come home and my wife is all snuggled under a blanket watching Harry Potter, a theme for the day for her, and I sit down, and watch a bit with her, finishing off the movie this morning (we went to bed before it was done).

So as I'm watching today the scene where Harry rides a hippogriff comes on. A hippogriff is a legendary creature that's the offspring of a griffin and a mare has been found in writings as early as 500 hundred years ago. So I'm watching and thinking what a cool animal. Why didn't God make one of those? I mean, it seems so obvious that it would be fun, it would be beautiful, why didn't God make a flying horse?

And then I thought some more. What would we have done with a hippogriff? Well, let's look at what we do have that's somewhat close. Horses. What have we done with horses? We have taken this beautiful animal and to us their primary reason for existence is to do work for us and for war. Look at our history with horses. We have bred them to make them faster and stronger for war (that's how we got Andalusians, we bred them from Vilano horses from Spain, the horses known for strength and used by Julias Caesar, and Barb horses, the horses that carried Genghis Khan and his hordes across Asia. Sorry, the other day I was reading about Lizzpan horses, also made for war from Andalusians). So our history with horses have been, find the beautiful wild animal, beat it until it does our commands, than use it to work for us or carry us to war. Nice history.

So back to the original question, if that's what we did with horses, what would we have done with hippogriffs? What work could we have made a flying horse do? How easily would it have been to win a war if we had flying horses? Would we have locked it up in zoos? It's not like we could give them huge fields to roam in, they'd fly away on farms and zoos. Would we have made cages? Clipped their wings? Tie them down? Maybe even have made a device to hold their wings to their bodies when we don't want them to leave, but it can be taken off when we want a ride. Doesn't sound like much of a life to me...

Maybe there are reasons God didn't make every kind, shape and species of animal we could imagine. Maybe He knows us better than we know ourselves...

T