【推荐1】Over the past few years, as architects and city planners have confronted the tragedy of our planet losing species at rates never seen in human history, many have started designing more greenery into urban areas, creating tidy plots of grass with non-native flowers. But European designers Hougaard and Qual find it problematic. These green spaces don’t actually encourage wildlife to grow. To counter that, the designers created outdoor furniture that would be beautiful to look at, but also allow bugs, birds, and wildflowers to thrive, nurturing biodiversity in cities and rewilding urban spaces.

The natural world tends to appear messy, chaotic, with plants and animals interacting with each other. Bacteria, plants, and insects thrive in rotting logs. Birds and bees create homes in dead, hollow tree trunks. Weeds and flowers grow in wild patches of grass. People consider this as messy and dirty, trying to get rid of them in cities despite the fact that even though wildlife appears chaotic, there is often method in the madness.

Qual had this in mind when creating a large, leaf-shaped insect hotel to be placed on a flower bed. The structure contains wooden blocks with different size of holes for different insect species. Hougaard created a metal log bench with an empty space in the middle to provide a habitat for creatures. He also created planting containers without a base, which are placed right on top of the soil and filled with different materials to provide a place for insects, reptiles, and small animals to hide and find food. They can also interact with earthworms and other creatures in the soil underneath, creating a thriving ecosystem.

Will people actually want to be so close to bugs, snakes, and nesting birds? The designers acknowledge that modern humans have been trained to stay away from such creatures. But these structures keep animals contained, while allowing people to observe and appreciate them safely. And ultimately, humans need to become much more comfortable living alongside wildlife.

【推荐2】Do Animals Communicate?

When we think of communication, we usually think of using spoken language. But in fact we communicate far more in other ways. Our eyes and facial expressions usually tell the truth even when our words do not.

Then there are gestures: raising the eyebrows, tapping the fingers, nodding and shaking the head. There is also body language of posture: Are you sitting or standing with arms or legs crossed? Is that person standing with hands held in front of the body or hidden behind?

So, do animals communicate? As we have learnt, there is more to communicate than words.

Take dogs for example. They show their teeth to warn, shake their tails to welcome, and stand firm with hair upright to fight. These signals are surely the equals of the human body language of facial expressions, gestures and posture.

Color can be an important means of communication for animals. Many birds and fishes change color, for example, to attract partners during the mating(交配) season. And mating itself is commonly done after a special dance which both partners take part in.

Here, again, there are striking similarities to young men and women who dress up to meet partners at parties, where the music is often too loud for word communication. Communication there takes place through appearance and movement.

The most carefully planned dances in the animal kingdom are those that bees use to communicate. With body movements alone they can tell other bees the direction and distance of a newly discovered food.

All these examples may suggest instinctive(本能的) rather than intelligent communication. And, in many ways, body language says far more than intelligent word communication ever can.

【推荐2】I said, “Papi, let me finish school.” None of his other daughters completed more than three grades. “I still can do my chores(家务),” I told him. “Pay for me to finish school.”

He dug his boot into the dry earth of Quanajuato, the state he never left in his entire life. But he still was the smartest man in our village. He read books about Egypt and knew how to handwrite, unlike my mother, who never had an education.

“Why do you want to return to school?” he said, lowering his eyes to me. “So you can meet a man, marry, and quit? You want me to pay for that?”

“No, Papi,” I said. “I won’t marry in school and I promise I’ll graduate.”

The wind whistled through the trees. My father saw a fisherman with a pole bent over the riverbank. I said urgently, “Papi,” and I almost grabbed his thick brown wrist. In the country, my father would stop and talk with any stranger, no matter what he was doing.He would talk aboutthe harvest, the weather, the family, but mostly, he would listen.

He turned, making his way to the fisherman. I followed behind him in my open-toed shoes, carefully picking my steps. I knew I had lost his attention and I searched around me for something to fill the time I would spend waiting. But there was nothing and nobody.

“Buenos dias,” my father said to the fisherman.

I took my seat ten feet from them. The two men stared across the lake and talked. Their voices droned on and were blended with the wind. I daydreamed.

“Marta, come here,” my father called to me.

I lifted myself up and walked very slowly toward them without lifting my feet off the ground.

“Marta,” my father said, “I have asked Don Toms what he thinks about your promise.”

I stared at this fisherman, this stranger, and then back at my father with wide eyes.

“I told him about your promise to stay single, and he told me—let her go.”

The fisherman looked down at his worn shoes. “If you want it,” he said to the earth beneath his feet.

Later, I became Father’s only daughter to complete high school education, and the only one to leave his house unmarried.

【推荐3】Milo is a rescue dog, adopted by 20-year-old Makayla Swift. But Milo is also a rescuer. One morning in November 2021, Swift opened her front door in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Milo took off running.

Milo ran to the house across the street. He seemed unsatisfied with this house, so he ran to the one next door, Swift on his tail.

“He started scratching on the front door,” Swift says. “I’m thinking, ‘Why is he really trying to break into her house?’”

She was embarrassed. Not everyone wants a strange dog in their house. But as she tried to drag Milo away, she could hear a sound coming through an open upstairs window. It was a voice yelling “Help!”

Hours earlier, around 4 a.m., Sherry Starr had risen from her bed. “All of a sudden, standing there between the toilet and the tub, I slipped,”she says.“I went down-hard-on the tile floor.” Starr is 85. She was stuck.

“I could not move at all,” says Starr, who was jammed between the toilet and the tub. Starr was scared. “ I’m thinking: I’m just going to die here,” she says.

Her best bet, she decided, was to listen for the letter carrier in the afternoon and scream like the dickens. For the next few hours, Starr practiced yelling: “Help! Help! Help!”

“Her voice was very faint,” says Swift. “You had to be right at the front door to hear Mrs. Starr yell for help.”

Unless you were Milo, who apparently heard Starr the moment Swift opened her own front door.

Swift called 911. Paramedics(护理人员)thought they’d have to remove the toilet to rescue Starr, but they gave one last pull and out she popped. Though bruised and battered, Starr declined a trip to the hospital.

Swift has known her share of distress(痛苦). Two years ago, her mother died. She says Milo has helped her with her grief. “That dog is a blessing,” she says.