【推荐2】It’s late evening in the middle of the winter. The snow is deep, but off I go into the wild. Suddenly, I hear it: the howl (嚎叫) of wolves. Excitedly, I walk faster in the direction of the howling.

I’ve been working as a volunteer wolf tracker in Yellowstone National Park for over a year. It’s my job to follow wolves to record information about them. Like wolves, however, I don’t work alone. I’m one of a team of people who have been in a project to help reintroduce wolves to the park.

Humans have always feared wolves. From fairy tales to movies, the wolf is always the bad guy —a danger to humans and other animals. In the 1920s, the organizers of the park shared this view about wolves and made the decision to drive them away from the park. As a result, the number of elk (麋鹿) in the park increased. The elk started looking for food near river banks since they didn’t have to worry about wolves. This, in turn, stopped trees from growing along the rivers, doing great harm to the environment there.

The return of wolves has already made a big difference. To begin with, the elk soon learned to stay away from the rivers, so new trees have been able to grow there. The trees become home to new wildlife, such as birds, and provide food for more animals.

The park is now becoming more and more popular with those who want to see wolves in their natural environment. It has also helped the local people make more money. Tourists visit the area, stay in the local hotels, and eat in the local restaurants.

Looking at the wild animals and the beautiful sceneries around me, I am amazed at the changes the wolf has made to Yellowstone. And happily, it is playing a good guy in this story.

【推荐3】Batesian mimicry (模仿) where a harmless species mimics a harmful one to escape enemies is widespread in animals. But most recorded examples of the phenomena are visual. For instance, the kingsnakes have evolved to look like a poisonous species, while the flower-loving flies have adopted the appearance of wasps (黄蜂). Now, for the first time, researchers have uncovered a kind of bat that has developed this trick related to sound to scare away enemies.

Danilo Russo first discovered the greater mouse-eared bat’s genius while working on his Ph. D. paper report on bats. “I noticed that when we handled the bats to take them out of the net or process them, they produced sounds just like wasps,” he said.

Years later, the animal ecologist at the University of Naples Federico II and his team set out to investigate if the sound was a coincidence or a way to frighten away enemies. The researchers recorded the cries of the bats when they were being caught. They then compared the sounds to four wasps. The similarities in the sounds convinced the scientists the bats were copying the insects to scare off enemies.

Russo and his team tested their theory on eight wild owls and eight human-raised owls. When the scientists played normal bat sounds, all the owls flew towards the speaker in search of the insects. However, the birds instantly flew away when exposed to the bat’s bee-like sound.

The researchers who published their findings observed that the wild birds showed greater fear than the ones brought up by humans. This indicated that the owls had previously been stung(叮) by the wasps and knew to clear away when they heard the buzzing sound.

“Birds tend to avoid stinging insects,” Russo says. “When nest boxes or tree holes are occupied by hornets, birds do not even attempt to explore them, not to mention nest there.”

【推荐2】Wuthering Heights

Suddenly we heard the sound of a carriage in the courtyard. He went to the window and I hurried to the door to open it.

It was the two Lintons, Hindley Frances and Catherine. They all ran into the house and stood in front of the large fire in the sitting room to get warm.

I told Heathcliff to go and join them. He opened the kitchen door as Hindley was coming out of the sitting room. When Hindley saw him, he pushed him back into the kitchen saying Joseph! Keep him away from the sitting room.

Then he noticed Heathcliff’s nice clothes.

“Look at you!” he said sneering. “Who do you want to impress? Get out or I’ll pull your hair until it’s longer than it is now!”

“It’s long enough already,” observed Edgar Linton. He was standing at the siting room door. His hands over his eyes like a mane!

Edgar didn’t say this to insult Heathcliff but Heathcliff had a quick and violent temper. He suddenly picked up a pan of hot apple sauce and threw the contents in Edgar’s face. Edgar screamed. Hearing her brother’s cries, Isabella, followed by Catherine, came running out. Hindley grabbed Heathcliff by the arm, took him to his room and gave him a beating.

I didn’t have much sympathy for Edgar but I cleaned his face. His sister was crying and wanted to go home. Catherine was confused and embarrassed and didn’t say anything.

【推荐3】In the UK, there is one car for every 5 people. In the USA there is one for every 2.5 people. So Americans sometimes have one car for every member of the family.

The family, with whom Liz, a student from Britain, is staying, have got four cars: a Mercedes-Benz for father, who drives it to work, a Chevrolet for mother, who uses it for shopping and visiting her friends, and Alex and his sister both have Fords. All the four cars are less than two years old, but none of them are as large as Liz has imagined.

“Smaller Cars have been made for a long time now,” Alex explained.“Partly because large cars burn up too much gas, and partly because of competition from smaller foreign cars, mostly Japanese and German.”

“I’ve noticed,” Liz said, “that your sidewalks don’t go as far as the suburbs, and yet you’re not supposed to walk along the highway.”

“That’s because nobody walks to work here,” Alex explained. “We do as little walking downtown as possible. We can’t do without our cars. We can do almost everything by using cars.”

“Did your father give you and June your cars?”

“Sure! But he won’t have money for gas or repairs or license. That’s why we both have part-time jobs three times a week. June waits table. I’m a teaboy.”

“But June’s just 17. At home we can’t get a learner’s license till we’re 17.” “We get one at 16 here. So all we have to do is to take a road test and get a driver ‘s license the moment we’re 17.”

【推荐1】The other day I was going through the airport at Ibiza and getting my Spanish exit stamp—a Brexit benefit or drawback depending on how you feel—and the nice passport lady flicked through (浏览) my passport, seeking a rare empty page, and said: “Wow, you have a lot of stamps.” Like a five-year-old, I practically glowed with pride.

Because I do have a lot of stamps. And sometimes I simply like to look at them. Right now, my passport is so full of stamps it is in danger of filling up. However, there is a fair chance that this won’t happen—not because I have any intention of ceasing my travels, but because most countries are moving on from the era of physical stamps. In future our comings and goings will be monitored digitally—and speedily.

This will, of course, be great for shortening airport queues, but it also means we will kiss goodbye to the romance of the exotic (奇异的) stamp, that reminder of the time we crossed from, say, Chile to Bolivia via the Andes and the salt plains. Or that first time we landed in the USA and got one of the simplest stamps of all. The border officer smiled as he stamped my passport and said: “Welcome to America.”

In my decades of travel, I have acquired some seriously—to my mind—exotic and wonderful stamps: Armenia, Madagascar, Greenland. Some of the smallest countries demand entire pages of your passport—looking at you, Cambodia.

Then there are the special stamps to truly remote destinations. My personal favourite is probably the one I got going into the Republic of Mount Athos in northern Greece. It was magnificently beautiful: the double-headed eagle of Byzantium, returned to life and impressed on my passport pages.

It was certainly more cheerful than the stamp I once got from the British embassy in Bangkok, which arranged for my return to the UK from Thailand after I really misbehaved. That stamp said “Impound (扣留) Passport on Arrival in London”. And so they did.

Yet I miss that stamp too.

【推荐3】Jason’s mother sat him down at the dinner table one Saturday afternoon to a feast he could not believe. In front of him were his three favourite desserts.

As Jason wondered what he had done to deserve them, his mother spoke, “Son, you see your favourite desserts, right?” Jason nodded.

His mother continued, “Now, I have some good news and some bad news for you. And then you get to make a decision. The good news is that you get to choose one of these three desserts to eat.”

So, that was it? He could only eat one.

“The bad news is that I have put poison in one of the three desserts,” Jason’s mother said. “The poison is so poisonous that it will kill you in a matter of minutes. It will be painful and there is no antidote (解药). If you don’t die immediately, you will know that you have chosen well.”

Jason’s mouth dropped open. “You’re joking, right?”

“No, son,” his mother replied. “I’m serious. Now, which dessert do you choose? You have ten seconds.”

“This is crazy,” shouted Jason. “I don’t need ten seconds! Only a fool would eat any of the desserts now that you’ve said eating one may kill him.”

Jason’s mother nodded in agreement. “That’s right,” she said. “Only a fool would take a one-in-three chance of eating something that could kill him, even if it tasted really great.” Then his mother lifted a package of cigarettes and put them on the table. “Tell me then,” she continued, “why would a teenager ever smoke one of these terrible things when the chance of dying from smoking-related illness is one in three?”

Jason’s face turned red. This has become one of the most important lessons for him. He would never choose a poisonous cake as well as a cigarette.