Dogs may help save the day in the Philippines, as they use their noses to smell out survivors buried by Friday’s mudslide (泥石流). The team of dogs arrived in the Philippines from Spain, and this Tuesday they were just beginning their work. Search officials told CNN they hope the recent rain will wash away the smell of rescue teams so the dogs can do their job more accurately.

The dogs were brought in after sound equipment found sounds coming from deep inside the ruins, at a place where a school stood before the mudslide covered it. The sounds could mean people are still alive under all the mud or it could just be the earth resettling.

On Monday, rescue workers worked at the school site until three in the morning, trying to locate survivors, and they will begin digging again as soon as the dogs think they find someone.

Human teams from the US, Malaysia, and Australia are all trying to help, too. But so far they have yet to locate any survivors. Rescue workers told CNN that an earlier report that 50 survivors had been found was false.

How did all that mud bury the village in the first place? On Friday, 2,400-foot Mt Kanabag turned into a mudslide after two weeks of constant rain weakened it. The mountain crumbled and the mud fell onto the village Guinsaugon, burying the 1,800 people who lived there. Out of the 300 houses in the village, only 3 were not covered by the mud. The village is on a southern Philippine Island called Levte. Rescue efforts have been difficult because the village takes six hours to reach from the nearest airport. Hopefully, the dogs can help their human friends find survivors.

I was talking to my friend Sandy about our children. Sandy had recently moved into the neighborhood with her four kids: Jane, Joe, Christopher, and her youngest, eighteen-month-old Kim. She seemed happy to have kids nearby, until she saw our dog, Sam.

Sam, our shiny black dog, loved to play with the kids and protect them. But Sandy had a fear of dogs, and she started to back away as Sam approached. I grabbed Sam’s collar and made him sit, trying to ease Sandy’s discomfort.

Sandy mentioned that she needed to get her kids ready to go to their grandmother’s house. Just then, her door opened and her kids rushed out. Sandy shouted at them to stay away from Sam.

The kids huddled (蜷缩) around their mom, looking at Sam cautiously (谨慎地). Emma, my daughter showed the kids how to approach a dog slowly and properly. The kids were won over by Sam’s friendly nature, but I knew it would take some time for Sandy to change her viewpoint.

After that incident, we made sure that Sam didn’t go near our neighbors without me present. One day, when the kids were playing across the street. I noticed the eighteen-month-old baby heading towards a small hill. I saw a car approaching and shouted to everyone to watch the baby. Without hesitation, Sam rushed out the door and ran across the street towards the baby. He ran to the boy in time to gently push the baby away from the oncoming car. The kids cheered, completely unaware of the danger. They thought Sam had come to play.

Within a year, Sam had made friends with all the neighbors. Even Sandy started to warm up to Sam and would occasionally come over to give him a hug.

Barred owls(大林鸮猫头鹰) are a large species native to eastern North America, but they began moving west at the start of the 20th century. By 1973, large numbers of barred owls had arrived in the western state of Washington. Later they moved south into Oregon and California.

In parts of the Pacific Northwest, the owls are now believed to be causing a drop in the population of a smaller, less aggressive bird: the northern spotted owl. In many ways, the barred owl is the spotted owl's worst enemy. The barred owl has more babies per year and eats the same animals, like squirrels and wood rats. And their numbers are now larger in many parts of the spotted owl's traditional territory.

David Wiens is a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, a federal agency that studies the Earth and its natural resources. He and other officials are doing something unusual to protect spotted owls: killing barred owls. It is a controversial, experimental program. More than 2,400 barred owls have already been shot.

Wiens is the son of a well-known bird expert and grew up with the fascination for birds. He has mixed feelings about the program. "It's a little distasteful, I think, to go out killing barred owls to save another owl species," he says. But he adds, “We knew that barred owls were out competing spotted owls and their numbers were growing too fast."

To catch barred owls, officials put digital bird callers on the ground. Then they step back and wait as several sounds from the devices fill the air. All of this happens in the dark of night. Barred owls dislike other birds in their territory, so they will fly down and chase other owls out. That is when Wiens and his team try to shoot them.