Heck… He was probably just waiting around until you were born so He would have someone interesting to talk to.
…my point being… that this is a little too human centric… I think it is more likely God had plenty to engage His participation in this extremely large universe we are a part of. And the Bible is just about our very small part of that.
It is not that I don’t think it possible that we are the first intelligent species. Considering all it took to make life on earth possible… 13.8 billion years doesn’t seem like such a long time to me.
There is also the Minkowsky structure of space time which means the ordering of events in the whole universe is not like a book or film. There is a great deal He can be a participant in any order He likes. Of course that goes both ways… meaning He could be a participant in our lives first before He bothers with the rest of the universe.
Proverbs 6 tells the sluggard to go to the ant, consider her ways, and be wise. One can get a theological lesson from ants, at any rate. But it’s not simple. The lesson is not to go and do whatever ants do. Trying to lift something that is fifty times my weight or crawling on all limbs and using my mouth to carry everything would be stupid. Raiding other people’s picnics or kidnapping people’s kids and raising them as slaves would be bad. Being diligent and cooperating in the things I should be doing would be good. Similarly, if we know God, we can appreciate His wisdom, power, creativity, goodness, etc. in the aspects of creation that we appreciate and trust that they are present in the aspects that we feel more like Ogden Nash’s comments on flies (“God in His wisdom made the fly. And then forgot to tell us why.”) But starting from “here’s what I like about this aspect of creation, therefore God is like that” is definitely not a reliable basis for theology. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and we do not know what His purposes are for everything. Nor should we demand that others perceive things the same way. Darwin was troubled by the perceived cruelty of a parisitoid gradually eating away its host from the inside before emerging and killing the host. But a farmer might be quite grateful for the pest insects being controlled.
Many sea slugs have very impressive colors and shapes. Terrestrial slugs have their own distinctive adaptations and features; you may yet find ways to appreciate them.