“WOW. I can’t believe how many people are showing up for this!” Dandelion Pinkley said. She stood in the wide parking lot of the E-Z Life Elephant Sanctuary, watching a lot of cars getting close. Her brother Doodlebug, their cousin Rudyard, and other kids were with her. All of them were ready to wash those cars.

The elephants who lived at E-Z Life had been saved. Now they enjoyed a safe home. And every clean car meant a few more dollars to support their well-being. So working the car wash was a great way to spend a summer day!

The first few cars parked. The drivers paid, and the kids got to work.

“My car is messy!” one driver said as she paid up.

“You’re not kidding.” Doodlebug said. He began washing it.

Nearby, Cousin Rudyard began shining the bumpers (保险杠) on a classic car. “Whoopee!” he shouted. “I love this car, and it’s perfect now!”

He turned to the next car, singing a funny elephant song along with some other kids. A few elephants began to come together at the wooden fence (栅栏).

“They’re happy,” Dandelion’s best friend, Tomiko, said.

“And look at the babies,” Dandelion said, as one put its trunk (象鼻) through the fence and waved at them. “We need to work faster, so we can get them more money!”

All the kids stepped up the action. For a while, it was a lot of fun. The car wash went perfectly. People drove up and paid their money. But the noise and the summer heat began to wear the young car washers down.

“I can’t take this too much longer,” Doodlebug said to his sister.

“I know,” Dandelion agreed, “but there are still so many cars waiting for a wash.” The line of cars seemed endless.

“I need a break,” Rudyard said.

“But we need to help the elephants!” Dandelion said, wanting nothing more than to take a rest. A second later she did.

“What’s the matter with you kids?” one driver complained (抱怨). “It’s only midmorning. You can’t stop working because of tiredness. You’re kids!”

Doodlebug complained, but he started to work again.

But before Dandelion reached the next car in line, the elephants had begun shooting water out their trunks and spraying (喷洒) each car clean.

In 1940, I worked in the checkroom of the railway station. I saw everybody that came up the stairs.

Harry was a young man who came to the station and waited at the head of the stairs for the passengers from the 9:05 train.

I remembered seeing Harry that first evening. He wasn’t much more than a thin, anxious kid then. He was all dressed up and I knew he was meeting his sister, who he hadn’t seen for many years.

Well, the passengers came up and I had to get busy. I didn’t look toward the stairs again until nearly time for the 9:18 and I was very surprised to see that the Harry was still there. His sister didn’t come on the 9:18 either, nor on the 9:40, and when the passengers from the 10:02 had all arrived and left, Harry was looking pretty upset. Pretty soon he came close to my window so I called out and asked him what his sister looked like.

“She’s small and dark. She is nineteen years old and very neat in the way she walk,” he said. “She has a face that has lots of spirit. I mean she can get mad but she never stays mad for long, and her eyebrows come to a little point in the middle. She’s got a brown fur, but maybe she isn’t wearing it.”

“I couldn’t remember seeing anybody like that,” I told him.

He showed me the telegram he’d received: ARRIVE THURSDAY. MEET ME AT THE STATION. MAY. It was from Omaha, Nebraska. “Well,” I finally said, “why don’t you phone to your home? She’s probably called there if she got in ahead of you.”

He gave me a sick look. “I’ve only been in the town for two days. We were going to meet and then drive down to the south of the city where I’ve got a job. She doesn’t have my address.”

When I came on duty the next day, Harry was still there and I asked more about his sister.

One day, after about two weeks, I thought I could say something encouraging to him.

My dad and I had been looking forward to the Stale cross-country race of my senior year of high school, which would be the climax (顶点) of my existence.

I was the fastest runner on my team, and I was supposed to make it into the top fifteen. We had been working towards this race for three years. It was everything to me, and it was everything to my dad. He was a runner and was wild with joy by my success in running. He made it to every race, even flying home early from business trips to see me run. I always listened for his voice, which rang above the crowd-telling me to relax my arms, calling out my time. He pushed me. He cheered for me. He believed in me. We spent countless hours on the sandy canals of Arizona. Breathing in the dust of the desert, the blossoms of the orange trees, and the terrible smell of the dairy farm, we made our way across the city. We pounded miles and miles into our running shoes, marking with every step the path to greatness. It was a journey that was just ours. A dream passed on from one generation to the next.

Then the big day came. It was hotter than normal - too hot. My throat felt like a field of cotton, cracked with the summer heat, as I waited for the gun to fire. I gazed out at the crowd; dozens of familiar faces from church and school flickered across my view. They had come for me. They were counting on me. I saw my dad set his watch, worry and excitement etched across his face. With the sound of a gunshot, the race began.

For the first two and half miles, I felt great. I had never before been so ready for something. The weeks leading up to the race were filled with hard practices and a strict diet. The scorching sun beat upon my back, blinding me with its brilliance. Nothing was going to stop me, though.

However, without warning, my strength was running out.

I whispered, “I’m so sorry I disappointed you, Dad.”

Alexis Langlois, who manages a large farm, heard her neighbor crazily knocking on her front door on a Monday afternoon.

“There’s an emergency”, Amber Countryman yelled. “The horses are stuck in the water.” Langlois was struck with “absolute panic”. She threw on her winter boots — without socks — and rushed toward the small pond on the 80-acre property. She was surprised by what she saw: four horses were in the water up to their necks in 10 feet of ice water.

She immediately called 911.While waiting for help to arrive, “people just started showing up,” she said. “Neighbors were pouring in. People came with ropes, chainsaws, shovels and pick axes.”

“I grabbed a bunch of supplies,” said Countryman, whose two teenagers and their friend also as sited with the effort.

“It was-8℃that day,” she said, adding that she brought out handwarmers and water for the helpers.

Everyone was determined to get the horses out of the pond — which is about 15feetwide.

Beneath a six-inch layer of ice, the water was “just barely above freezing”, said Chris Yerkes, the South Kalispell Fire Department chief who rushed to the pond with about a dozen volunteer personnel.

When the firefighters arrived, neighbors had already attempted to pave a path through the ice toward the edge of the pond using pick axes, sledgehammers and shovels, and “we continued with that effort.” Yerkes said. Unfortunately, “as we got closer to the edge, we realized there was about three to four inches of mud.”

The thick layer of mud — which the rescuers couldn’t cut through — blocked the horses from climbing out. Firefighters enlisted additional support from Flathead County Animal Control, as well as staff from local equestrian organization Rebecca Farm.

“There had to have been at least 60 people here,” Langlois said. “It was very swift action on everybody’s part.”

It took nearly two hours to find a workable solution that could bring all four horses to safety.

To get the horses out, they used a powerful tractor (拖拉机) to get the animals out of the mud and ropes to pull them over the edge.

I found the kitten sitting on the front step of our house. He was black and white and looked quite weak. Where did he come from? I noticed he had no collar around his neck. Who would be so irresponsible?

I went inside and opened a can of fish. After I placed the can in the doorway, the kitten hungrily lapped it up and then walked right inside the house. Later, after jumping onto a bunch of pillows on the couch, he began to groom his hair.

I bet his last owners didn’t love him at all! I thought. If someone can’t take care of their kitten, they deserve to lose him! Our family never owned pets, but I had always wanted one. It’s a good thing I found that kitten and took him in. Thank goodness he found me!

The kitten kept meowing quite a lot. And then, it started trying to bite my hand.

“Hey, kitten! I’m not food!” I said. But the kitten tried again to bite my finger. I knew I had to get him some proper cat food. “You stay put, kitten!” I told him. “I’m going to get you food!” Then I grabbed my keys and headed out to the pet store nearest to our house.

On my way to the store, I spotted a sign on the telephone pole:

LOST KITTEN-Black and White, very friendly. If you find him, please call us.

“If you were so worried about your kitten,” I thought, “maybe you should have taken better care of him!”

When I walked into the pet store, I found that the place was packed with kids handing out flyers about the same cat to customers inside. In the back of the store, I saw a boy under 10 years old, crying in his wheelchair. “I can’t believe I lost my kitten!” he said to his parents.

I looked at the flyers on the wall carefully this time — it was definitely the cat I had back at home!

The little boy began to cry with laughter.