Directions
Read this story. Then answer questions 1 through 7.

Excerpt from One-Eyed Cat
by Paula Fox

Ned loved snow, the whisper when he walked through it, a sound like candles being blown out, the coming indoors out of it into the warmth, and standing on the register in the big hall through which the dusty, metal-smelling heat blew up, and then going back out again, shivering, cold, stooping and scooping up a handful to make a snowball, packing it
5             hard with wet mittens, hefting it, tossing it as far as he could, and the runners of his sled whispering across it as he sleighed down the slopes which were smooth and glittering and hard, like great jewels.

On the first December, there was a heavy snowfall. When Ned looked out of his window the next morning, the river glowed like a snake made out of light as it wound
10           among the snow-covered mountains.

He ate breakfast hastily, too preoccupied to read the story on the cereal box. Mrs. Scallop1 was broody this morning and left him alone, her glance passing over him as it passed over the kitchen chairs.

On the porch, he paused to take deep breaths of air which tasted, he imagined, like
15            water from the center of the ocean, then he waded into the snow, passing the Packard2 its windows white and hidden, the crabapple tree with its weighted branches, down the long hill trying to guess if he was anywhere near the buried driveway. By the time he reached Mr. Scully’s house, his galoshes were topped with snow and his feet were wet. Mr. Scully’s shades were drawn the house had a pinched look as though it felt the cold.

20             Ned went around to the back until he could see the shed. There were boot tracks in the snow leading to it and returning to the back door. He guessed the old man had taken in the cat’s bowl; it was nowhere to be seen. You couldn’t leave anything out in this weather, it would freeze. Mr. Scully had told him that finding water in the winter was a big problem for animals. Licking the snow or ice could make them sick.

25            Ned stared hard at the shed. Perhaps the cat was inside, squeezed in behind logs in a tight space where its own breath would keep it warm. He was going to be late to school if he didn’t get a move on, but he kept looking hard all over the yard as though he could make the cat appear out of snow and gray sky. Twice, his glance passed over the icebox. The third time, he saw that the motionless mound on top of it was not only the quilt
30            but the cat, joined into one shape by a dusting of snow.

1 Mrs. Scallop: Ned’s family’s housekeeper
2 Packard: a brand of car that is no longer manufactured

Ned held his breath for a moment, then put his own feet in Mr. Scully’s tracks and went toward the shed. The tracks had frozen and they crunched under Ned’s weight, but the cat didn’t raise its head. Ned halted a few feet away from it – but of course, he realized, it wouldn’t hear him because of its deaf ear. He could have gone closer to it than he’d ever
35             been but he had a sudden vision of the cat exploding into fear when it finally did hear him.

When he got back to the front of the house, he saw fresh footsteps on the road. he could tell it was the road because of the deep ditches which feel away to either side. He guessed they were Billy’s tracks. It was odd to think that Billy, huffing and puffing, had
40            gone past Mr. Scully’s place, thinking his own thoughts, while he, Ned, only a few yards away, had been searching for the cat. He found Evelyn’s tracks, too, and later on, Janet’s, the smallest of all. He felt ghostly as if he’d been left alone on a white, silent globe.

Somewhere in the evergreen woods, snow must have slid off a bough, for he heard the loud plop, then the fainter sound of the bough springing up, relieved of the weight. He
45              thought about the cat, visualizing how it had looked on the quilt. How still it had been! Why hadn’t he gone right up to it, looked at it close, touched its fur? Why had it been so motionless – still as death, still as a dead vole he’d seen last summer in the grass near the well? He came to the snow-covered blacktip road upon which a few cars had left their ridged tire tracks. He had a strong impulse to turn back, to play hooky for the first time in
50              his life. Mr. Scully, with his poor eyesight, might not spot the cat on top of the icebox, might not, then, set food out for it. Fretting and shivering, his feet numb, Ned went on to school.

He tried very hard to concentrate on his lessons, to watch Miss Jefferson’s plump, even handwriting on the blackboard as she wrote out the lines from a poem by Thomas Gray
55              that the class was to memorize that week, but try as he might, the image of the unmoving animal on the ragged old quilt persisted. Last week, on a rainy afternoon, the cat had looked at Ned, had cocked its head as though to see him better. Its one eye, narrowed, had reminded him of a grain of wheat.

“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

60              The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea…”

Ned read the lines several times before copying them down in his copybook. The words made no sense to him. It was this that had made his hours in school so hard ever since he and Mr. Scully had seen the cat last autumn, this drawing away of his attention from everything that was going on around him. He was either relieved because the cat was
65             where he could see it or fearful because he didn’t know where it was.

1. Read these words from lines 18 and 19.

Mr. Scully’s shades were drawn; the house had a pinched look as though it felt the cold.

The use of the words “pinched look” contributes to the tone of the story by making the house seem

A. tense
B. angry
C. uncertain
D. disappointed

2. Lines 20 through 24 contribute to the development of the plot by

A. showing that Ned and Mr. Scully are friends
B. describing the challenges of dealing with heavy snow
C. suggesting that Mr. Scully has been neglecting the cat
D. describing weather conditions that can be dangerous for the cat

3. In lines 31 through 36, Ned keeps his distance from the cat because he

A. envisions the cat being sick from licking ice or snow
B. believes the cat will make him late to school
C. imagines the cat will become panicked
D. remembers the cat is deaf and unlikely to respond

4. Lines 37 through 42 in the story reveal that Ned feels

A. isolated
B. confused
C. relieved
D. confident

5. Ned’s decision to leave the cat causes

A. the cat to become more afraid
B. Ned to be left behind by the other children
C. the cat to go hungry for the rest of the day
D. Ned to be distracted from his work during school

6. Which quotation best supports a central theme of the story?

A. “He ate breakfast hastily, too preoccupied to read the story on the cereal box.” (line 11)
B. “Twice, his glance passed over the icebox.” (line 28)
C. “…but try as he might, the image of the unmoving animal on the ragged old quilt persisted.” (lines 55 and 56)
D. “Ned read the lines several times before copying them down in his copybook.” (line 61)

7. Which quotation from the story best shows how the cat has impacted Ned’s life?

A. “He was going to be late to school if he didn’t get a move on, but he kept looking hard all over the yard as though he could make the cat appear out of snow and gray sky.” (lines 26 through 28)
B. “The third time, he saw that the motionless mound on top of it was not only the quilt but the cat, joined into one shape by a dusting of snow.” (lines 29 and 30)
C. “It was odd to think that Billy, huffing and puffing, had gone past Mr. Scully’s place, thinking his own thoughts, while he, Ned, only a few yards away, had been searching for the cat.” (lines 39 through 41)
D. “It was this that had made his hours in school so hard ever since he and Mr. Scully had seen the cat last autumn, this drawing away of his attention from everything that was going on around him.” (lines 62 through 64)

Directions
Read this article. Then answer questions 22 through 28.

Clash of the Condiments: Wasabi vs. the Chili Pepper
by Mary Beth Cox

Most condiments are peaceable enough. The sauces, spreads, and pickles of the world add flavor to our foods without kicking up much of a fuss. This is not true of the pungent or “hot” condiments. They are more aggressive. They get our attention by purposely causing us pain. These strong-armed seasonings are often the source of friendly
5              competitions. Loyal fans will contend that their favorite pungent condiment is the one that packs the most powerful punch. Ladies and gentlemen, you are cordially welcomed to just such a contest. Here it is, the Match of the Moment: Wasabi vs. the Chili Pepper.

IN YOUR CORNERS

Introducing in the Green Corner, hailing from the island nation of Japan, sushi’s inseparable sidekick: Wasabi! Wasabia japonica grows wild on the cool, damp banks of
10             Japan’s many mountain streams. The chill of its habitat is quite ironic since wasabi is famous for bringing the heat. The plant is a botanical relative of mustard and horseradish. Pungency runs in the family. Traditionally, wasabi is prepared by grating its rootstock on the abrasive skin of an angel shark. Authentic wasabi is relatively rare and difficult to come by. The emerald condiment that is served outside of Japan is almost always
15              horseradish pulp dyed with green food coloring. Whether the wasabi is real or whether it’s the more common substitute, a whopping snootful will make you cry for your momma!

And in the red corner, originating from the Central and South Americas, now an international culinary superstar: the Chili Pepper. Chili peppers are fruits of the plants of the botanical genus Capsicum. They are related to the tomato and the eggplant. They’re
20              the renegades in an otherwise mild-mannered botanical family. Chili peppers include but are not limited to the poblano, the cayenne, the jalapeno, the tabasco, the habanero, and the serrano. One of these culprits sometimes goes by the alias “chipotle.” A chipotle (pronounced chee-POHT-lay) is none other than a dried smoked jalapeno. Chilies were introduced to the non-Ameican world by Christopher Columbus, who mistakenly
25              identified them as variants of black pepper. Chilies have since taken the culinary world by storm. They appear alongside dishes served around the globe, from the Basque provinces to North Africa and the Middle East to India and Southeast Asia. A potent chili pepper in the kisser will make you rue the day you were born!

POWERFUL PUNCHES

Both wasabi and chilies are condiments of world-class pungency. But how do they
30              matchup head to head? Each has its own unique tactical move. Each has its own special point of attack. The active ingredient of the wasabi plant is stored stealthily in its cells. Under the normal growing conditions, this ingredient is completely harmless. It’s not until the plant’s cell are ruptured (as by the grating action of angel shark skin) that the trouble begins. Enzymes convert the ingredient into molecules of allyl isothiocyanate. It’s the
35               chemical characteristics of these irritating molecules that are the secret to wasabi’s
pungency. Allyl isothiocyanate molecules are lightweight. They are volatile. They are also soluble in water. As a consequence, the consumption of wasabi launches an airborne assault on the consumer’s sinuses. Allyl isothiocyanate molecules waft up the nose and back of the throat. They dissolve in the watery fluids they find there. They intercept nerve
40               endings in the nasal passages. Specifically, these molecules target pain receptors of the type known as TRPA1. TRPA1 receptors respond to the attack by sending emergency signals to the brain: “Yikes…we’ve gotten hold of something painfully hot!”

Chili peppers conduct operations of a different sort. Their active ingredient is a substance called capsaicin. It’s found in the spongy inner tissue of peppers, but it can leak
45                onto the seeds and the inner wall of the fruit. Capsaicin molecules are heavier than the oils, so they aren’t as easily dissolved in water. Capsaicin molecules instigate an incendiary assault upon contact with exposed vulnerable surfaces. They cling to the tender tissues of the lips, mouth, and throat. They burn eyes that are rubbed with capsaicin-laced fingers.

50                Capsaicin molecules interact with pain receptors of the type TRPV1. Again an alert is expedited to the brain: “Mayday! Mayday! Let’s not eat any more of that, please!”

WHERE’S THE REFEREE?

So which of these condiments causes the most pain? To settle any contest, a scoring system is required. There is a way to compare the relative heat intensities of the various chili peppers. It’s called the Scoville scale. Scoville ratings are determined by brave human
55           test subjects who willingly sip extracts of chili pepper juice. Extracted juices are diluted again and again until their heat can no longer be detected. A high rating on the Scoville scale means that a lot of dilutions are necessary to eliminate the pain caused by a particular pepper. Unfortunately, Scoville ratings are not applicable to wasabi. The method is specifically designed to extract capsaicin from chili peppers. It doesn’t work for allyl
60            isothiocyanate, or for anything else.

Pepper pungencies are also compared by using chromatography. Chromatography is an analytical technique that separates the chemical components of a mixture. After separation, the amounts of each component are quantified. Chromatography can determine how much capsaicin is in a pepper. It can also determine how much allyl
65             isothiocyanate is in wasabi. If two chili peppers have the same amount of capsaicin, it be assumed that those peppers are equally “hot”. But the same assumption cannot be made when comparing chili peppers to wasabi. There’s no way to know if equal amounts of capsaicin and allyl isothiocyanate cause equal degrees of pain. So chromatography cannot definitely judge this contest.

70             It isn’t even possible to directly measure and compare nerve responses, since two different types of pain receptors are involved. Wasabi and chili peppers are like pungent apples and oranges. There’s no objective way to declare one more potent than the other. This friendly competition won’t be settled anytime soon. Everyone is free to chime in with an opinion. You just have to try both of these pungent powerhouses, then root for
75             your own favorite flavor of pain.

22. How do lines 1 through 7 mainly establish the tone of the article?

A. They create curiousity by inviting the reader to provide an opinion on the two condiments
B. They create interest by describing loyal fans supporting their favorite condiment.
C. They create humor by personifying two condiments in an imagined contest.
D. They create tension by analyzing the popularity of two condiments.

23. Read lines 25 and 26 from the article.

Chilies have since taken the culinary world by storm.

Which detail best supports the author’s claim?

A. Chili peppers come in many varieties.
B. Chili peppers are used in many different countries.
C. Chili peppers are related to tomatoes and eggplants.
D. Chili peppers were mistakenly thought to resemble black pepper.

24. Read this sentence from lines 37 and 38 of the article.

As a consequence, the consumption of wasabi launches an airborne assault on the consumer’s sinuses.

What does the phrase “airborne assault” add to the author’s description?

A. It explains the effect of experiencing the molecules in wasabi.
B. It suggests a painful experience that makes wasabi undesirable.
C. It warns that direct contact with wasabi causes injury.
D. It cautions that wasabi causes an intense repeated attack occuring over time.

25. What is the role of the section “Powerful Punches” in the development of the article?

A. It describes the physical differences between wasabi and chili peppers.
B. It explains the best ways to experience the heat from wasabi and chili peppers.
C. It describes why wasabi and chili peppers are both enjoyable and painful to consume.
D. It provides a scientific explanation for the effects of consuming wasabi and chili peppers.

26. The Scoville scale determines the strength of the heat in chili peppers by

A. counting the nuber of sips of chili pepper juice a human subject can consume
B. recording the amount of capsaicin present in specific amounts of chili pepper juice
C. measuring how much chili pepper must be weakened for it to no longer cause pain
D. comparing descriptions of the heat a human subject feels while drinking chili pepper juice

27. What is the result of being unable to use the Scoville scale to measure the heat strength of wasabi?

A. Chromatography is used to compare the heat strengths of wasabi and chili peppers.
B. Comparing the heat strengths of wasabi and chili peppers using scientific method is impossible.
C. A new scale will be developed to compare the degree of pain caused by wasabi and chili peppers.
D. Experts now rely on a scale based on measuring consumer pain responses to wasabi and chili peppers.

28. Read this sentence from lines 71 and 72 of the article.

Wasabi and chili peppers are like pungent apples and oranges.

Which evidence from the article best supports this statement?

A. “They get our attention by purposely causing us pain.” (lines 3 and 4)
B. “After separation, the amounts of each component are quantified.” (lines 62 and 63)
C. “If two chili peppers have the same amount of capsaicin, it can be assumed that those peppers are equally ‘hot.” (lines 65 and 66)
D. “There’s no way to know if equal amounts of capsaicin and allyl isothiocyanate cause equal degress of pain.” (lines 67 and 68)

Directions
Read this article. Then answer questions 29 through 35.

Excerpt from Humans With Amazing Senses

When bats go out to hunt, they send out sonar signals at such high frequencies and in such rapid burst that they can hear the signals bounce off mosquitoes in midair. They then zero in on the insects like laser-guided missiles. Dolphins use the same technique to find their dinners. It’s called echolocation, a technique that uses sound to identify objects
5              by the echoes they produce.

Fourteen-year-old Ben Underwood of Sacramento, Calif., is one of the few people known to use echolocation as a primary means of navigating the world on land. There’s not even a hint of light reaching his brain. His eyes are artificial, but his brain has adapted to allow him to appraise his environment. He makes a “clicking” sound to communicate
10             with objects and people around him.

Scientist have discovered that in the brains of the blind, the visual cortex has not become useless, for example – to substitute for sight, the brain’s visual cortex becomes active, even though no images reach it from the optic nerve. Echolocation creates its own images.

15             “I can hear that wall behind you over there. I can hear right there – the radio, and the fan,” Ben says.

Ben says every object in his life talks to him in ways that no one else can hear or understand.

Forty-year-old Daniel Kish of Long Beach, Calif., also uses echolocation, and has
20             become an expert on it, founding the World Access for the Blind, an organization that teaches others how to echolocate. Kish leads other blind people on mountain biking tours and hikes in the wilderness, visualizing and describing the picturesque sights around him through echolocating.

Clicking to Do Anything

If you listen closely to Ben or Kish, you can hear how they find their way. Ben says he
25               can distinguish where the curbs are as he cruises his neighborhood streets.

He can find the pole and the backboard on a basketball goal and tell which is which by the distinctive echo each makes. Even though he can’t see the goal he’s aiming for, he can sink a basket. Ben doesn’t remember how or when he began clicking, but he’s developed his abilities to such an extent that aside from echolocation, he can rapidly
30              discriminate the sounds in video games.

Ben lost his sight when he was 2. He was diagnosed with cancer in both eyes, and when chemotherapy failed, his mother, Aquanetta Gordon, was left with one option: For her son to live, both his eyes had to be surgically removed.

Gordon remembers her son after the operation.

35              “He woke up and he said, ‘Mom, I can’t see anymore.’ And I took his hands and I put them on my face and I said, “Baby, yes, you can see.” I said, ‘You can see with your hands.’ And then I put my hand on his nose and I said, ‘You smell me? You can see with your nose and your ears….You can’t use your eyes anymore, but you have your hands and your nose and your ears.”

40               In a house already filled with three other children, Ben’s mother decided not to treat his blindness as a handicap. In school, Ben recognizes his classmates by their voices. With the help of Braille books and a talking laptop computer, Ben attends the same classes as sighted students.

Rich Mental Images, Without Visual Elements

Like Ben, Kish also lost his eyesight to cancer at age 1. He was raised to believe he
45                 could do pretty much anything, and he discovered clicking by accident as a child.

“I have mental images that are very rich, very comples. They simply do not possess the visual element,” Kish says.

In retrieving those pictures, Kish varies the pace and volume of his clicks as he walks along; and what he can tell you about an object’s qualities is sometimes
50                 astonishingly thorough.

If bats can distinguish prey as small as mosquitoes with echolocation, and some dolphins can detect small targets a hundred yards away, what are the ultimate capabilities of human beings like Ben and Kish?

Peter Scheifele, who studies hearing and sound production in animals and people at
55                  the University of Connecticut, analyzed samples of the clicks that Ben and Kish make.

“Ben clicks, looks to me like once every half second, whereas a dolphin is actually making 900 clicks per second. And the bat is even faster than that,” Scheifele says.

The bottom line: Human beings send out sounds at much slower rates and lower frequencies, so the objects people can picture with echolocation must be much larger than
60 the ones bats and dolphins can find.

29. Which statement expresses a central idea of the article?

A. Very few people use echolocation in their daily lives.
B. Echolocation is a technique that can be utilized by humans.
C. Echolocation has been studied by scientist for many years.
D. Some animals are known for using echolocation to find food.

30. How do lines 1-5 contribute to the understanding of the text?

A. by showing the widespread use of echolocation by animals
B. by giving examples to explain how echolocation works
C. by presenting the characteristics of animals that use echolocation
D. by describing how each species uses echolocation differently

31. In people who are blind, the visual cortex seems to help

A. activate the optic nerve where images are formed
B. increase the amount of light reaching the brain
C. create images in the brain based on sounds
D. make echoes of sounds from clicks

32. Read this sentence from lines 17 and 18.

Ben says every object in his life talks to him in ways that no one else can hear or understand.

Which quotation best supports this claim?

A. “He can find the pole and the backboard on a basketball goal, and tell which is which by the distinctive echo each makes.” (lines 26 and 27)
B. “Even though he can’t see the goal he’s aiming for, he can sink a basket.”
C. “In school, Ben recognizes his classmates by their voices.” (lines 41)
D. “With the help of Braille books and a talking laptop computer, Ben attends the same classes as sighted students.” (lines 41 through 43)

33. Read Daniel Kish’s claim from line 46.

“I have mental images that are very rich, very complex.”

Which quotation from the article best supports this claim?

A. “…Kish of Long Beach, Calif., also uses echolocation, and has become an expert on it….” (lines 19 and 20)
B. “He was raised to believe he could do pretty much anything….” (lines 44 and 45)
C. “…Kish varies the pace and volume of his clicks as he walks along….” (Lines 48 and 49)
D. “…what he can tell you about an object’s qualities is sometimes astonishingly thorough.” (lines 49 and 50)

34. How do lines 51 through 53 develop a key concept of the article?

A. by using a comparison to suggest the echolocation potential of humans
B. by demonstrating that humans use echolocation more effectively than animals do
C. by describing why using echolocation benefits bats and dolphins in unique ways
D. by showing that scientist need more time to study echolocation techniques

35. Echolocation used by humans is distint from echolocation used by animals because animals can

A. create louder clicking noises
B. distinguish among more sounds
C. see objects that are farther away
D. locate objects that are smaller in size

Directions
Read this passage. Then answer questions 36 through 42.

In this excerpt, the author talks about introducing her chickens to her yard.

Excerpt from Birdology
by Sy Montgomery

At first I was afraid they’d run away or become lost. We had a cozy, secure home for them prepared in the bottom storey of our barn, with wood shavings scattered over the dirt floor, a dispenser for fresh water, a trought for chick feed, some low perches made from dowels, and a hay-lined nest box made from an old rabbity hutch left over from one
5             of the barn’s previous denizens, in which they could lay future eggs. Chickes need to be closed in safe at night to protect them from predators, but by day we didn’t want to confine them; we wanted to give them free run of the yard. But how could they possibly understand that they lived here now? Once we let them out, would they even recognize their space in the barn and go back in it? When I was in seventh grage, my family had
10          moved, once again, to a new house; my first afternoon there I literally got lost in my own backyard. Could these six-week-old chicks be expected to know better?

Gretchen assured me there would be no problem. “Leave them in the pen for twenty-four hours,” she told me. “Then you can let them out and they’ll stick around. They’ll go back in again when it starts to get dark.”

15            “But how do they know?” I asked.

“They just do,” she said. “Chickens just know these things.”

When before dusk, I found them all perched calmly back in their coop, I saw that Gretchen was right.

In fact, chickens know many things, some from the moment they are born. Like all
20           members of the order in which they are classified, the Galliformes, or game birds, just-hatched baby chickens are astonishingly mature and mobile, able to walk, peck, and run only hours after leaving the egg.

This developmental strategy is called precocial. Like its opposite, the altricial strategy (employed by creatures such as humans and songbirds, who are born naked and helpless),
25           the precocial strategy was sculpted by eons of adaptation to food and predators. If your nest is on the ground, as most game birds’ are, it’s a good idea to get your babies out of there as quickly as possible before someone comes to eat them. So newborn game birds hatch covered in down, eyes open, and leave the nest within twenty-four hours. (An Australian game bird known as the malleefowl begins its life by digging its way out of
30            its nest of decaying vegetation and walks off into the bush without ever even meeting either parent.)

That chickens hatch from the egg knowing how to walk, run, peck, and scratch has an odd consequence: many people take this as further evidence they are stupid. But instinct is not stupidity. (After all, Einstein was born knowing how to suckle.) Nor does instinct
35            preclude learning. Unlike my disoriented seventh-grade self (and I have not improved much since), young chickens have a great capacity for spatial learning. In scientific experiments, researchers have trained days-old chicks to find hidden food using both distant and nearby landmarks as cues. Italian researchers demonstrated that at the tender age of fifteen days, after just a week’s training to find hidden food in the middle of their
40           cage, chicks can correctly calculate the center of a given environment – even in the absence of distinctive landmarks. Even more astonishing, they can do it in spaces they have never seen before, whether the area be circular, square, or triangular. How? The chicks “probably relied on a visual estimate of these distances from their actual positions,” wrote University of Padova researcher L. Tommasi and co-authors in the Journal of
45            Comparative Physiology,”…[but] it remains to be determined how the chicks actually measure distances in the task.”

We never determined how our first chickens knew their new home was theirs, either. We never knew how they managed to discern the boundaries of our property. But they did. At first, they liked to stay near the coop. But as they grew, they took to following me
50            everywhere, first cheeping like the tinkling of little bells, later clucking in animated adult discussion. If I was hanging out the laundry, they would check what was in the laundry basket. If I was weeding a flower bed, they would join me, raking the soil with their strong, scaly feet, then stepping backward to see what was revealed. (Whenever I worked with soil, I suspect they assumed I was digging for worms.) When my husband, Howard,
55            and I would eat at the picnic table under the big silver maple, the Ladies would accompany us. When my father-in-law came to help my husban build a pen for Christopher Hogwood, then still a piglet, the Ladies milled underfoot to supervisse every move. The hens were clearly interested in the project, pecking at the shiny nails, standing tall to better observe the use of tools, clucking a running commentary all the while. Before
60            this experience, Howard’s dad would have been the first to say that he didn’t think chickens were that smart. But they changed his mind. After a few hours I noticed he began to address them. Picking up a hammer they were examining, he might say, directly and respectfully, “Pardon me, Ladies” – as if he were speaking to my mother-in-law and me when we got in the way.

65            But when their human friends are inside, and this is much of the time, the Ladies explore on their own. A chicken can move as fast as nine miles an hour, whick can take you pretty far, and ours are free to go anywhere they like. But ours have intuited our property lines and confine their travels to its boundaries. They have never crossed the street. And for years, they never hopped across the low stone wall separating our land
70           from that of our closest neighbor. That came later – and it was not the result of any physical change in the landscape, but the outcome of a change in social relationships among their human friends.

36. Lines 1 through 11 best support the idea that the author

A. is fearful the chicks will be vulnerable to predators
B. is unsure about what she can expect the chicks to understand
C. wants the chicks to explore the yard she has set up for their needs
D. has not planned how she will teach the chicks to adjust to a new environment

37. Based on lines 12 through 18, which statement best describes the exchange between Gretchen and the author?

A. Gretchen proves a point, and the author feels embarassed.
B. Gretchen gives the author advice, and the author learns from it.
C. Gretchen comforts the author, and the author feels more confident.
D. Gretchen shares her personal experiences, and the author criticizes them.

38. What do lines 23 through 31 indicate about the developmental strategy of chickens?

A. Chickens are adapted to food availability and pressure from predators.
B. Chickens are born ready and require no further maturing.
C. Chickens have a faster growth rate than other birds.
D. Baby chickens spend no time with their parents.

39. Lines 49 through 59 develop the key idea that chickens raised by humans

A. are curious about the activities of their caregivers
B. become a nuisance to the other projects of their owners
C. grow to prefer the company of people over other chickens
D. develop their intelligence more than chickens raised by hens

40. Read lines 36 through 42 from the passage.

In scientific experiments, researchers have trained days-old chicks to find hidden food using both distant and nearby landmarks as cues. Italian researchers demonstrated that at the tender age of fifteen days, after just a week’s training to find hidden food in the middle of their cage, chicks can correctly calculate the center of a given environment – even in the absence of distinctive landmarks. Even more astonishing, they can do it in spaces they have never seen before, whether the area be circular, square, or triangular.

How do these lines relate to lines 59 through 64?

A. Lines 36 through 42 express an opinion, and lines 59 through 64 provide support.
B. Lines 36 through 42 identify why something happens, and lines 59 through 64 describe what happens.
C. Lines 36 through 42 present facts, and lines 59 through 64 support facts with a personal experience.
D. Lines 36 through 42 provide comparison, and lines 59 through 64 provide evidence for the comparison.

41. Which claim do lines 65 through 72 support?

A. The chickens stay where they do as a direct result of what the author has taught them.
B. The chickens do what they do because of their interactions with their environment.
C. The chickens stay where they do because they are unfamiliar with other areas.
D. The chickens do what they do as a result of trial and error.

42. How does the author’s attitude toward the chickens change from the beginning of the passage to the end?

A. It varies from fear for their safety to gratitude for winning over the author’s father-in-law.
B. It shifts from being uncertain about their abilities to being amazed at their complex ways.
C. As she observes the behavior of the chickens, she realizes their learning keeps pace with the risks they take.
D. As she gains confidence in her ability to raise her chickens, she comes to appreciate their self-sufficiency.