Six days of spring rain had created a raging river running by Nancy Brown's farm. As she tried to herd her cows to higher ground,   she _______ and hit her head on a fallen tree trunk. The fall knocked her out for a moment or two. When she _______, Lizzie, one of her oldest and favorite cows, was licking her face. The water was _______. Nancy got up and began walking slowly with Lizzie. The water was now waist high. Nancy's _______ got slower and slower. Finally, all she could do was to _______ her am around Lizzie's neck and try to _______. About 20 minutes later, Lizzie managed to successfully _______ herself and Nancy out of the raging water and onto a bit of high land, a small island now in the middle of acres of _______ water.

_______ it was about noon, the sky was so dark and the rain and lighting so bad that it took _______ another two hours to discover Nancy. A helicopter lowered an ambulance man, who ________ Nancy to a life-support hoist. They raised her into the helicopter and took her to the school gym where the Red Cross had set up an emergency ________.

When the flood went down two days later, Nancy ________ went back to the "island" Lizzie was ________. She was one of 19 cows that Nancy lost. "I owe my life to her" said Nancy ________.

Love Is Blind: The Magic of Tabby

In October, 2019, I started my work at a local animal shelter. Tabby was a 14-year-old dog. What’s more, she was blind and deaf. Tabby’s adoption (收养) seemed impossible. After all, we didn’t have many adopters coming in asking, “Can you show me all of your really old dogs who are also _________?” We had all thought that Tabby would live out the rest of her life at the _________.

One day a woman named Loretta came to the shelter. Her son, Gary, had _________ Tabby’s picture and stories on the shelter’s website at home. They were interested in meeting her! It was the only _________ we ever received about Tabby. What could a young child possibly see in a 14-year-old dog who was both blind and deaf? Most boys would want a dog who could grow with them and _________ through grassy fields on summer days. Tabby would _________ be able to do that. But after meeting her, Loretta and Gary decided that she was the right dog for their family. They adopted Tabby!

If Tabby’s story had simply ended with her _________ adoption, it would still have been something very special indeed. _________, it was what happened after her adoption that people might regard as “magic”. Gary _________ seizures (癫痫). Since Gary and Tabby met they became __________. They did everything together. Besides, Tabby could be aware of the coming of Gary’s seizures __________ they happened, giving his family a(n) __________ 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? Nobody could explain __________ Tabby did it. But those of us who were fortunate enough to know her and her family had witnessed (见证) the magic, the kind that has its roots in __________.

I live about three miles from the beach. Every few years, the humpback whales (座头鲸) would come for a few days. November 2020 was one of those_________, so I took out a kayak (划艇) to watch the_________. I got out on the water in the morning. There were already about 15 other kayakers. After half an hour, I had my first humpback_________.

When whales go down the water, they leave a slick (油膜) on the water. I_________that if I paddled (划) toward it, I’d be safe.

Suddenly, a school of fish started jumping out of the water into the kayak. What should have been an interesting moment was_________. Their actions meant they were_________the whales, and so must I. But before paddling to_________, the kayak was lifted out of the water about six feet, and I_________out of the kayak into the whale’s mouth. With the mouth closed, I had no idea how_________I’d be dragged.

__________for me, whales have enormous mouths but too tiny__________to take in anything larger, I included. As soon as the whale dipped under water, I was sent back up onto the__________within 10 seconds.

A few kayakers paddled over with total shock, “We thought you were dead.” I was not, of course. I was much more aware of the__________of ocean than before, but still I remembered clearly that I__________laughter when I found six silverfish__________off my shirt, a souvenir (纪念品) from this near-death experience.