Once upon a time, much of the world was populated by wolves. They ranged all over the United States and Canada, Siberia and much of mainland Europe, as well as Great Britain, and if humans hadn't come along, they would still be there _______. But man did come along, farmed the land, _______ the wolves , killing their livestock and so gradually drove them out of the homes that had once been theirs.

Wolves are not ______ in our language and our literature, however. In fairy stories, they are seen as evil and dangerous, always ______ to eat people. Remember the time when Little Red Riding Hood thinks that a wolf is her grandmother? 'What big teeth you've got, grandmother? ’she says, and the wolf, disguised as her grandmother, shouts back, “All the better to eat you with, my dear!’

If you really want to see what English-speaking humans think of the wolf, just look at the ______! ‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing’ is not a pleasant person and a ‘wolf-whistle’ is not a pleasant sound!

Yet wolves are totally unlike the image we have of them from legend and language. For a start, they don't ______ humans; indeed they do their best to keep out of our way. They are very sociable animals, living in packs and looking after their young with a fondness that should make some humans _______ themselves. Far from wolf music being _______ , the howl of the wolf--the cry of the whole pack—as the full moon rises is one of the most beautiful sounds in nature. They are beautiful creatures which can run at speeds of up to 65 kph if they have to. They can jump up and run up rock faces like a cat. And when they do ______ , their 42 large teeth are fearsomely effective.

But the ______ remains that we love the lion, the king of the jungle, while we demonise (妖魔化）the wolf, one of the most beautiful animals in the world. Only _______ do writers treat them nicely; _______ a she-wolf is supposed to have fed the twins Remus and Romulus, who went on to found the city of Rome.

And so, while man kills animals in their millions, often just for the fun of it, the wolf on the mountain, out in the wilderness, running over the Siberian wastes, represents a state of natural ________ that we do not know and can never obtain, even though we ______ it in our hearts. Perhaps that's why, in the end, we ______ the wolf so much一for having something we can never get our hands on.

Children’s books are filled with fantastic friendships between humans and beasts. From a young age, we learn that if a tiger comes for tea we should expect it to eat all our sandwiches, and if a Peruvian bear_______for lunch we had better have some marmalade (柑橘酱) in the cupboard.

In this fantasy world, we can coexist peacefully with large mammals. _______, in real life, young people are having fewer wild interactions than ever before. In part this is a result of _______screen time and decreased access to wild spaces. Perhaps it doesn’t help that many countries drove out their most exciting _______ —bears and wolves—centuries ago.

Had they not, more people in the developed world might now be facing similar problems to those in Novaya Zemlya. The playgrounds of this remote Russian archipelago (俄罗斯半岛) were recently_______by a group of hungry polar bears, driven into human settlements in search of food and _______after rising temperatures destroyed the last hospitable slices of the Arctic sea ice. It’s the same story we see across the world: habitat _______ driving elephants to attack crops, human settlements spreading into tiger territory, and people losing their lives to big cats.

The Incident of the Polar Bear in the Playground is not a/an _______consequences to The Humans Who Melted the Ice Caps. We have known for years that Arctic temperatures are rising at_______rates. It should come as no surprise that the polar bears we have forced to leave their natural homes have ________shouting at humans’ front doors in search of their basic requirements for survival. Unfortunately, they are more ________ to be met with the business end of a shotgun than a marmalade sandwich. And who can criticize the people in the main settlement, Belushya Guba, for wanting to protect themselves?

We’ve had years to________these issues. This is not an unusual ________but the latest in a list   of increasingly frequent human/polar bear incidents. And it’s part of an even longer list of rapidly growing areas where there is human/wildlife conflict. We can’t________the local residents of Novaya Zemlya for their quiet town becoming a bear refugee camp. They are not the ones burning fossil fuels, ________farming cows and flying across the world for business meetings. It’s almost always the case that those making the decisions that are most serious for the environment are the furthest from the consequences.

The life of the dog, Shelby, is a surprising story. The little dog went from living in garbage heaps (垃圾堆) to winning the hearts of moviegoers around the world.

Shelby was first found near Nashville two years ago when Megan Buhler, a Cheatham County Animal Control officer, was patrolling (巡逻) nearby. He saw the poor dog searching for something to eat in the garbage.

“There were lots of cars passing by — I mean, it was heavy traffic,” Buhler said. “She was so scared when crossing the road, and finally came up to me for help.”

Shelby was then taken to a local animal centre where she was _________ , without the worry for food. Most importantly, the workers here took _________ of her smiling face to improve the _________ of her being taken home by people. However, they never expected this would put Shelby on the _________.

At that time in Hollywood, filmmakers were _________ for a new movie called A Dog’s Way Home. They _________ to find a dog to play the leading role. So they asked Miller, a(n) _________ dog trainer who had trained dogs for years for help.

Miller _________ three dogs, but none of them stood out after some time of training. He then _________ the pictures of Shelby by accident from Cheatham County Animal Control and immediately became __________ to see it. It turned out that Shelby was __________ after three months of training.

Since the film was put on, Shelby has been __________ for the way she carried humour and brought much __________ to people.

Shelby is now taking a break in Tinsel Town. __________, she’s still winning hearts through her __________. She serves as a treatment dog in hospitals and special needs schools.