“If March comes in like a lamb, it goes out like a lion.” I’ve heard it all my life, and because March weather changes often, it turns out to be true 50% of the time. But what is the derivation for this weather folklore?
Some say it came from a Medieval belief in balance, or perhaps the Zodiac. Leo the Lion rises in March and Aries the Ram (which must have started out as a lamb) rose in April. Now that we are in Lent, we sing or hear about the “Lamb That Was Slain.” And there are countless artistic renditions of the “Peaceable Kingdom.”
The metaphor of the “Lion will lie down with the Lamb”, also known as The Peaceable Kingdom Passage, is a perfect example of the Mandela Effect—the shared false memory phenomenon. Most people remember an Old Testament passage incorrectly. No matter what translation one uses, Isaiah 11:6 states that “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb” and several translations continue that “the lion would take grass for food” or “eat straw with the ox.”
While this passage is lovely poetry, as a naturalist, I subscribe to a different and perhaps even more beautiful image of natural order…..the food web. Plants absorb the energy from the Sun and convert it to food. Herbivores eat the plants and convert them to the proteins and fats required by the carnivores.
Not all carnivores are lions and tigers and bears. Baby songbirds survive only if they consume the protein-rich plant-eating caterpillars their parents feed them. Big fish need to eat the little fish that eat little plant-eating aquatic creatures. And as Isaiah suggested, wolves and lions eat meat.
Carnivores, no matter their size, cannot eat plants. Lions cannot feed on grass and straw. Without a functioning food web, we would not have the world as we know it.
But the world as we know it---the human world---- is not a Peaceable Kingdom, and with all my heart, I hope for peace in our future.
