SALT LAKE CITY— Chaos broke out Tuesday morning at a secretive LDS agricultural research facility when over two dozen genetically modified tapirs escaped their pens, stampeding through the slot canyons of central Utah while church officials scrambled to assure the public that “everything is totally normal and doctrinally sound.”
The facility—officially listed as a “Faith-Based Equine Genetics Observatory”—has long been rumored to house the church’s ambitious project to crossbreed tapirs until they are large enough to carry a full-grown human, thus retroactively validating the Book of Mormon’s claim that “horse-like” animals roamed the Americas before Columbus arrived with actual horses.
“This is a sacred endeavor,” said Brother Eliam Farnsworth, lead zoologist and amateur scripture whisperer. “The Lord works in mysterious ways—and sometimes those ways involve genetically engineering a South American jungle pig to justify a few verses in 1 Nephi.”
According to LDS scripture, horses were “prepared for the use of man” by ancient American civilizations described in the Book of Mormon. The only hiccup? Horses didn’t appear on the American continent until Spanish conquistadors brought them on their ships. “Those who expected the LDS church to admit defeat don’t know the meaning of the word perseverance,” explained Farnsworth.
In the 1990s, early Mormon apologists proposed a bold, if confusing, workaround: maybe “horse” was a spiritual mistranslation for “tapir,” the pudgy, short-legged cousin of the rhinoceros, best known for resembling a pig that lost a bet with evolution.
The idea baffled scientists and caused widespread theological whiplash. “A tapir can no more carry a man into battle than a golden retriever can pull a covered wagon,” noted Dr. Hannah Gutierrez, professor of Pre-Columbian Zoological Accuracy at Stanford. “But I do admire their inventive pioneer spirit.”
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The recent tapir jailbreak began when one of the enhanced creatures—nicknamed “Son of Ham”—chewed through the electric fence using what one witness called “demonic molars.” Surveillance footage shows the beasts stampeding past an unsuspecting group of service missionary farm-hands, knocking one Elder off his “european horse.”
Eyewitnesses describe the herd as “eerily majestic” and “still nowhere near horse-sized.”
“They looked like horses if you squinted really, really hard, and also have never seen horses,” said one traumatized service missionary on the scene.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has downplayed the incident, issuing a statement reaffirming that the “presence of horses, or horse-like mammals, or at the very least mammals with the spirit of a horse, has no bearing on one’s salvation, and so does not deserve attention.”
Meanwhile, rival religious groups have mocked the endeavor, with one Catholic bishop noting, “At least our miracles don’t require USDA approval.”
Despite the fiasco, church leadership remains optimistic. “We believe in eternal progression,” said Brother Farnsworth. “And if the millennial will be delayed until we can finally ride tapirs, so be it.”
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