5 . It happened on a rainy Saturday morning last month. My wife Catherine and I were driving along what some people called moose (麋鹿) alley. It was so ______ that there were few cars on the road. ______, something happened. A moose jumped out across our path. I had been driving for years and was good at driving. In order to ______ knocking into the moose, I made a quick turn to the other lane. If I had not done that, the moose might have been killed, and my wife and I might have got ______, too. A few seconds later, when I ______ and looked back in my rear view mirror, the moose was getting up and then ran into the bush. Shaken but ______, we both looked at each other with a surprised expression.

From then on, I often thought about the relationship between humans and ______ . We know that animal species have appeared and disappeared ______ since life began on the Earth. This is a(n) ______ phenomenon. However, animal species have been ______ at a much faster rate for about a century now ______ human factors such as pollution.

Certain philosophers and scientists keep repeating that if we don’t save animals, how we will be able to save ourselves. A better ______ of animals gives us a better understanding of our own species. The ______ to protect animals and nature in general ______ the value of a society. And all animals play roles in nature and have a right to ______. Therefore, I think we should try our best to save endangered animals, because humans cannot live on the Earth alone.

6 . UPS driver Ryan Arens was making his rounds near a pond in Bozeman when he heard a strange sound. It was December, and about 15feet from the frozen bank was the _________ of that sound —a half-submerged (半淹没的) wirehaired dog. _________ to cling to a thin layer of ice. An elderly man was already on the _________determined to save her. He was up a rowboat, striking the ice with a rock to create a(n) _______ to the dog. It was slow going.

“Animals are my weakness,” said, _________ why he chose to take off his overcoat, even though the temperature was in the-30℃, and _________ the rescue task.

His heart beating fast. Arens _________ the dog, using the other man’s rock to break the ice. He gave one _________ heave (拖动) with so much force that he slipped off the boat, _________ into 16 feet of cold water. Luckily, he __________ in time to see the dog going under. He swam about five feet toward hen took __________ of her collar, and pulled her to the ice. He then lifted the dog into the __________ and slid it back to the shore, where __________ bystanders carried the dog to the home of the rowboat owner. Once in the house himself, Arens jumped into a __________ shower with the dog until they both defrosted. If the dog had stayed in the pond for a few more minutes, she would have likely __________.

That special delivery was the highlight of my UPS career,” said Arens.

7 . A rabbit is running into its hole. You will ask, “What has this to do _________ language?” Well, when a rabbit sees something _________, it runs away. Its _________ moves up and down as it runs. When other rabbits see this, they run too. They know that there is _________. The rabbit has told them something _________ making a sound. It has given them a _________.

Many _________ animals use this kind of language. When a bee _________ some food, it goes back to its home. It cannot tell the other bees _________ the food is by speaking to them, __________ it does a little dance in the air. This tells the bees where the food is.

Some animals say things __________. A dog barks (吠叫), for instance, when __________ comes near. A cat purrs (叫) when __________. Some birds make several different sounds, each __________ its own meaning.

But human beings have something that no animal has — a large number of words which have the meanings of things, actions, feelings or ideas. We are able to give each other information, to tell or inform (告诉) other people __________ we think or how we feel. By writing words down we can remind ourselves of the things that have happened, or send messages to people far away. No animals can do this.

No one knows how man learned to make words. Somehow (然而) he learned to make them. As centuries went by, he made more and more new words.

8 . My work started in 2003 at my local animal shelter’s Adoption Department. It seems like such a long time ago. In the 13 years that have ______, more than 50,000 animals have passed the doors of the ______. Most of them, I do not remember. But ______ there are animals who stand out. Tabby was one such ______.

Tabby was one of the many ______ dogs. What’s more, she was blind and deaf. Tabby’s ______ to be adopted seemed small. But one day a woman ______ Loretta came to the shelter. Her son, Gary, who ______ epilepsy (癫痫) had seen Tabby’s picture ______ the shelter’s website. They were ______ in meeting her! Most boys would want a puppy, a dog who could ______ with him and run through grassy fields on summer days. Tabby would never be able to do that. But as they say, “love is blind.” After meeting her, they decided to ______ Tabby!

If Tabby’s story had simply ended with her ______ adoption, it would still have been something very ______ indeed. But it was ______ happened after her adoption that some might label as “magical”. They became inseparable. They got along well with each other so that Tabby could sense Gary’s seizures(疾病发作)before they ______, giving his family a ______ that one was about to strike. What’s more, Gary seemed to be having fewer and fewer seizures since Tabby’s ______.

How could it be? There are some things that challenge logic and understanding in this world. Sometimes the best that we can do is to accept a ______, which we couldn’t attempt to explain. Because when you try to ______ it, you lose the beauty and miracle of it all.

9 . Milo is a dog, adopted by 20-year-old Makayla Swift from an animal shelter. One morning in November 2021, Swift opened her front door in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Milo immediately ________ to the house across the street. Milo seemed ________, so he ran to the one next door, Swift on his tail. “He started scratching (抓) the front door,” Swift says. “I’m thinking, why is he insistently trying to ________ her house?” She was embarrassed for not everyone wants a(n) ________ dog to leave marks on their property. But as she tried to drag Milo away, she could hear a voice yelling “help” coming through an open upstairs window. Hours ________, around 4 a.m., Sherry Starr had risen from her bed. “All of a sudden, standing there between the toilet and the tub, I ________,” she says. “I slumped on the floor.” Starr is 85. “I could not move at all”, says Starr, who was ________ between the toilet and the tub. Starr was scared and thought she was going to die there. Her best ________, she decided, was to listen for the letter carrier in the afternoon and scream. For the next few hours, Starr practiced yelling: “Help! Help! Helllp!” “Her voice was very ________,” says Swift. “You had to be right at the front door to hear Mrs. Starr yell for help ________ you were Milo, the dog.” It ________ heard Starr the instant Swift opened her own front door. Swift called 911. Rescuers thought they’d have to break down the toilet to ________ Starr, but they gave one last pull — and out she popped. Though injured, Starr ________ a trip to the hospital.

Swift has known her share of ________ for living alone. Two years ago, her mother died. She says Milo has helped her with her grief too. “That dog is a ________,” she says.

10 . People believe that having pets is overall a good thing for children. But does this belief hold up to _______? The new field of human-animal interaction aims to find out.

Ten years ago, when psychologist Joan Smith reviewed the literature on child-animal relationships, she reported that interacting with animals led young children to better understand biology than pet-less children. Kindergartners who had cared for goldfish were more _______ when responding to questions like “Does a goldfish have a heart?” They also more easily _______ biological information from one species to another, inferring that baby frogs get bigger just like goldfish do. She also reports that those kids who turned to their pets for emotional support were less _______ than these who didn’t.

The past ten years have seen some advances, but literature on the topic is still rather _______. A recent paper by researcher Meg Brown at Lakeside University _______ some important information to the discussion.

She turned to a data-set that includes information from 7, 000 kids, ranging in _______ from thirteen to nineteen years. For the study, both pet owning and other types of _______ activities, like horseback riding, were considered as human-animal interaction experience.

She found that adolescents with animal experience were more likely to see themselves as important _______ to their communities, such as doing community service. She also found that the higher the level of ________ between a teenager and animals, the higher they scored on measurements of emotional connectedness in general. While causality(因果关系) cannot be determined, Brown says that it is at least ________ that children and adolescents can learn about healthy social relationships from their experiences of interacting with animals. “If a connection exists between the skills required for these relationships, then it might be useful to make use of animal relationships as a way to ________ the development of social skills,” she says.

Brown is aware of the limitations of her study. It can’t reach any conclusions about the causal role of animals in kids’ lives, and it’s limited to ________ nationwide. Besides, the study was not designed to ________ any potential negative effects of human-animal interaction experiences. Some other studies, for example, have shown that pet owners have higher levels of ________, like depression, than non-pet owners.