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Killer's youngest son left on an LDS mission last week. Ricky's in Tennessee now. No word yet on whether he's been mauled by a raccoon.

It's a legitimate concern after Monday's animal attack on an LDS missionary at a Guatemalan zoo. According to news reports, the missionary scaled a wall for a better picture of himself with some lions.

While the missionary posed, the lions got to thinking, "Ooh, lunch." A couple of them grabbed the missionary and gave him a serious gnaw. He survived thanks to what some see as a miracle.

I'm no expert on miracles but I have read the Bible, and it occurs to me that a bona fide miracle would have been not getting bitten at all.

That's what happened to Daniel in the Old Testament. When he was caught worshipping contrary to Persian law, King Darius had him tossed into a den of lions.

The next morning when Darius found Daniel alive, he was so moved by the mercy of Daniel's god that he rounded up Daniel's accusers, their wives and all their kids and fed them to the lions.

Darius then decreed that henceforth the god who had delivered Daniel from the lions would be revered by his entire kingdom. This change of heart was, of course, entirely lost on those being eaten.

Spiritually diminished creatures, the lions at the Guatemalan zoo probably hadn't read the Bible and therefore didn't know they weren't supposed to eat servants of the Lord. Instead, they should wait for the less worthy.

I'm not exactly sure how an animal attack (or lack thereof) gets parlayed into God's business. All I know is that it's never happened to me.

I wasn't chewed by lions on my mission in South America, but I was attacked by other animals. I got bitten a couple of times by dogs, knocked down by a cow, spat at by a llama and peed on by monkeys.

To the best of my knowledge, none of these events had any religious connotation outside the fact that I was a 20-year-old missionary.

For example, after we knocked on a door one afternoon, a huge dog charged out. When he started growling, I yelled at him to leave. But it was his porch, and so he bit me on the thigh instead.

Maybe it's how my mind works. I never stopped to consider that it was a miracle I hadn't been bitten higher on my anatomy, or even the possibility that I'd been chomped as a penalty for spreading the wrong faith.

Instead, I focused all my spiritual energy on wishing that I had hit the dog harder with my briefcase — and that I wouldn't get rabies.

If there was a heavenly lesson to be learned from what happened with the monkeys, the only one I got was not to throw rocks at them anymore. Likewise, not to tease llamas or get too close to cows.

I suppose it's possible that God (or the devil) shows his hand in mysterious ways through animal attacks. But if there's a lesson to be learned or a price to be paid, I'm betting that it has more to do with acknowledging our own foolishness.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/notpatbagley.