1 . I live in a town, about half a mile from the banks of a river, It had been raining buckets that week and there were _________ warnings for nearby areas, but not where I was.

As a precaution (预防), I’d _________ sandbags outside my garden door just in case water managed to flow through. As I fell asleep, I was _________ by the sound of rushing water.When I swung my legs off the bed, I was _________ to feel cold water already up to my kneesand rising fast. Trembling, I _______ my phone on the table and _________ the flashlight. Water was coming from the garden door. The river must have _________ burst its banks and broke the sandbags. And now I had to get out--fast!

With the water up to my waist, in bare feet I started to paddle (蹚水) to my only _________ the door leading to outdoors. Finally, I made it to that door and _________ to pull it open, but the water’s __________ was high. Anyhow, with great efforts, I made a __________ of about 30 centimeters, enough for me to get through. Rushing down outside, I __________ that if I hadn’t woken up in time, I would have drowned. Many houses around us were __________ , including a home for the disabled.

I learned to be grateful through the experience and determined to live each day to its __________ .I will remember a famous saying: “Don’t remember the day when you lost everything. Remember the day you__________ .”

2 . Molai grew up in a tiny village in India. The village lay near some wetlands which became his second _______. He learned the value and beauty of _______ there from a very young age. 

When he was 16, Molai began to notice something _______ happening around his home. A flood had hit the area earlier that year and the _______ it caused had driven away a number of birds._______, the number of snakes had declined as well. He _______ that it was because there weren’t enough trees to protect them from the _______. The solution, of course, was to plant trees so the animals could seek _______ during the daytime. He turned to the _______ department for help but was told that nothing would grow there. However, Molai went looking on his own and ________ a nearby island where he began to plant trees.

________ young plants in the dry season was ________ for a lone boy. Molai built at the ________ of each sapling (幼树) a bamboo platform, where he placed earthen pots with small holes to ________ rainwater. The water would then drip (滴落) on the plants below.

Molai ________ to plant trees for the next 37 years. His efforts have resulted in 1,360 acres of naturally-grown land that has become home to many plants and animals.

3 . Five years ago, a friend asked me to look after his cat while he went on holiday, and I realized the idea had potential on a bigger scale. So I moved to London and decided to _______ cat sitting (猫咪代养).

For me, cat sitting is about _______ two groups of people who need what the other can offer. I get to stay in people’s _______ without rent while they’re on holiday. The owners get _______ cat sitting. It also means that there is someone to keep an eye on their homes while they are away. It seems a fairer _______ than just watering plants or walking dogs — I’m more of a cat person.

I have always loved cats, and their gentle temper makes them ideal _______ for someone working from home. Cats have such different personalities, so it’s not surprising that I _______ more with some than others. An owner once told me not to _______ her cat to sit on me, as it had happened only once. But just four days later, the cat came over and sat on my lap. I sent her a photo!

Cat sitting helps me with my _______ anxiety disorder, too. I want to be around people, but sometimes I can’t. Sometimes, this anxiety even ________ me from leaving the house. But since becoming a cat sitter my mental health has ________. Having my own ________ gives me the power to plan my day. I can recharge when I need to and can go out and meet people when I want. The cats have ________ helped.

Now I have stayed in 25 houses, ________ 30 cats and saved more than 10,000 pounds that would have gone on ________. One day I want to save up for a flat so I can have a cat of my own.

4 . My friend Keith, a keen animal lover, found a baby squirrel in his garden. Deeply attracted by him, he decided without hesitation to ________this cute little thing and named him Joey. He and his children all loved Joey and did different things with him, feeding him and playing games. Joey, ________, loved each and every one of them. In just a few months, he became a family member.

“He was just the most lovable squirrel. He’d let anybody ________ him,” says Keith. “Right up until the fellow broke in.” That was the rainy day Keith came home to discover some obvious signs of a(n) ________. Strange, muddy footprints tracked around the ________ . His safe was scratched up (刮擦). A couple of items of value were ________. He called the police to make a ________ about the break-in, and soon officer Kate arrived at the house.

“Joey had run in the bedroom … and kind of ________ her,” says Keith. Kate asked if Joey bites. Not usually, Keith explained, but he is, after all, a ________ animal. You never know.

Hours later, Kate returned with a remarkable story: She’d ________ a suspect, based in part on the cuts all over his hands.

“She asked him, ‘Did you get that from a________?’ and he says, ‘Yeah, it kept ________ me and wouldn’t stop until I left,’” says Keith.

The attack “scared” him, apparently, because he wasn’t ________ to have a squirrel come flying out of nowhere at him,” says Kate. “So basically he said he took ________ what he could and left as fast as he could.”

Keith’s family got their stuff back, and Joey got his favorite ________: nuts.

5 . When Anika Puri visited India with her family years ago, she was surprised to come across a market in Bombay filled with rows of ivory jewelry (象牙饰品) and statues. _________, ivory trade has been illegal for more than 30 years, and elephant hunting has been___________India since the 1970s.

“I was quite ___________ ,” the 17-year-old recalls. “Because poaching (偷猎) is illegal, how come it is still such a big issue? ”

Curious, Puri did some research and discovered a shocking___________: Africa’s forest elephant population had ___________by about 62 percent between 2002 and 2011. Years later, the numbers continued to drop. Puri, a wildlife lover, wanted to do something to help protect the species and others still___________by poaching.

Over the course of two years, Puri___________EISa, a low-cost product of a machine learning-driven software that___________movement patterns in thermal infrared (热红外) videos of humans and___________. The software is four times more____________than the existing most advanced uses a $250 FLIRONE Pro thermal camera with 206 *resolution (分辨率) that plugs into an off-the-shelf iPhone 6. The camera and iPhone are then____________to a drone (无人机), and the system____________real-time inferences as it flies over parks as to whether____________below are humans or elephants.

Its potential impact on society earned her the Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication. “____________isn’t a straight line,” Puri says. “It makes me resourceful. It helps me____________a more creative thinker.”

6 . Damon Carson calls himself a matchmaker (媒人) of the never-ending waste of American society, trying not to pair people with people, but things with people.

In the late 1990s, Carson was on break from business school in Vail, Colorado, when he ______ the vast world of waste. He began ______ creating a secondhand store that would sell old ______ and keep them out of being ______. As a result, in 2010, his company, Repurposed Materials ______.

For nearly ten years, his company, Repurposed Materials, has not been looking to ______ the waste he gets—breaking it down to make something new —but rather finding new homes for thrown-away goods in their original ______.

Carson, a husband and father of three adult children, is far from ______. Frugal (节俭) is how he describes himself. The clothes he’s wearing all came from a(n)______ shop; his truck was bought with 290, 000 kilometers driven.

“Why break something down, why melt something down, if it still has ______?” he asks. An old oil-field pipe might be melted down and turned into a car bumper, but it still takes an amount of ______ to finish the complete change. Why not leave it as a steel pipe? Why not turn it into a ______ post (杆、柱) on a farm? The only cost is ______.

American industrial facilities create and ______ about 7.6 billion tons of unwanted industrial materials every year. For the moment, Carson’s unique business finds new ______ for millions of kilograms of industrial waste every year.

7 . A 3-year-old boy who was lost in the woods for 3 days is now safe at home. But Casey told his parents that he was not ________ in the rainy, freezing cold woods. He said he was with a friend — a ________.

The child went ________ on January 22 while playing with friends at his grandmother’s house. When the other children ________ to the house and Casey didn’t, hundreds of people ________ the search. Then on January 24, someone called the police saying he heard a child ________ in the woods. The police then found Casey at night. He was in good health. After being ________ carefully by the doctor, Casey was sent home with slight ________.

Casey told the police that he had ________ with a black bear for two days and he called it his “________”. His mother told reporters that Casey did not say how he was able to ________ in the woods for three days. ________, she said, “He did say he had a friend in the woods, a bear, with him.” His mother ________ everyone who joined the search for her son. “We just want to tell everybody that we’re very thankful that you took the ________ out to search for Casey,” said his mother. “He is good. He’s already asked to ________ online cartoons.”

8 . Over the years, thanks to my life’s obstacles (障碍). I understood the meaning of faith and the strong will to survive. It was Hurricane Ike that made me fully _________ the beauty of our strength and a human’s motivation to _________.

Mom had a two-week vacation in summer. While we enjoyed our holiday in Southeast Texas, we didn’t realize the fact that Ike would cause months and likely years of “labor”. By September 7th, the “eyes of Texas” were watching Hurricane Ike more closely, making the typical mad rush for last-minute hurricane _________. Two days later, both oil and food were in _________ demand.

In the early hours of September 11th, some neighbors were planning to _________the storm in their homes, while others were making final preparations to get away. At first, we decided to stay. But that afternoon, the Houston-Galveston area would be on the more dangerous side of the storm. Mom and I packed some of our most _______ belongings in the car and headed for the East Texas town of Lufkin.

As Ike pushed farther inland, we _________ power in Lufkin. On Sunday, our next-door neighbor told us via cell phone that our house had remained well. Our hopes could not have been _________. But a few hours later, the neighbors reported that our brick chimney had gone, and it was sitting on our living room _________ a hole in the roof between two skylights (天窗).

We wouldn’t be allowed to return home until September l7th. I climbed upstairs, and looked toward the hole in the roof which showed a beautiful blue sky.

Without hesitation, I shouted, “Wow! A third skylight!”

My neighbors could not believe I was making jokes instead of crying, but __________ is always good medicine. It was with that joke that I knew, given time, everything would be okay.

9 . The sun was beginning to sink as I set off into the Harenna Forest. I was on my way to _________ a unique honey harvest. Here, in south-east Ethiopia, hand-carved beehives (蜂房) are placed in the _________. Reaching them to get the honey is difficult and often _________.

I followed beekeeper Ziyad over a wide stretch of grassland _________ entering a thick jungle. Ziyad began preparations. He gathered _________ of damp tree leaves, wrapped them with string, and _________ the bunch to create a torch (火把). Then, with one end of a rope tied to his waist and the other end around the trunk of a tree, Ziyad began _________. He stopped every few minutes to move the _________ higher up the tree trunk.

_________, Ziyad got close to the hive which was around 20 meters above the ground. Sitting on a branch, he __________ towards it and blew smoke from his torch into a tiny hole in the hive. Suddenly, Ziyad __________ a sharp cry. Within seconds, he’d __________ the trunk and was back on the ground.

It was too __________ to collect the honey. A cool summer had delayed __________. Baby bees were still in the honeycombs (蜂巢). The angry adult bees kept attacking as Ziyad escaped from the tree. He had to wait for the right __________ to go back up.