I sat down to read under an old tree in the park. I felt my life was   21  , for my whole world was dark.

A young boy ran up to me, out of   22  . He stood right before me with his head down and said   23  , “Look what I found!” In his hand was a flower, and what a poor sight! The flower was dry and   24  . I gave him a small smile and then turned my eyes away so that he could take his dry flower and go off to play.

  25  , he sat next to my side and placed the flower to his   26   and said in surprise, “It smells sweet and it’s beautiful, too. That’s   27   I picked it. Here, it’s for you.” The flower before me was dead. But I knew I must   28   it, or he might never leave. So I accepted the flower, and replied, “This is just what I   29  .” Just then, for the first time I noticed that the boy could not   30   —he was blind.

Tears (眼泪) came down my face as I   31   him for picking the best one. “You’re welcome.” he smiled, and then ran off to   32  . I sat there and wondered how he was able to learn about my pain (痛苦).

Through the eyes of a blind child,   33   I could see the problem was not with the world; the problem was me. And for all those years I myself had been   34  . I decided to see the beauty in life, and   35   every second of my life. And then I held that dry flower up to my nose and breathed in the smell of a beautiful rose.

21. A. hopeless         B. colourful            C. simple           D. wonderful

22. A. mind             B. trouble              C. breath           D. work

23. A. sadly                B. strictly             C. angrily          D. excitedly

24. A. dead             B. fresh                C. alive            D. heavy

25. A. So                   B. Or               C. However      D. And

26. A. head             B. nose             C. ear          D. neck

27. A. how              B. when             C. where            D. why

28. A. buy              B. sell             C. accept           D. break

29. A. admire               B. dislike              C. want         D. have

30. A. cry                  B. speak                C. smile            D. see

31. A. forgave              B. thanked          C. paid         D. hated

32. A. sleep                B. study                C. dance            D. play

33. A. at most              B. at times         C. at first         D. at last

34. A. cheerful             B. useful               C. blind            D. deaf

35. A. waste                B. enjoy                C. lose         D. forget

There are about 80,000,000 mines*  under the ground in more . than 60 countries. It is difficult and dangerous to clear these rnines, About 50  people including many children were’ killed ‘or htirt each iay.  In 2003,  APOPO,  a Dutch research com pan y that uains the an imals, came up with the-idea of s\ng rats to search for the mines.
The animal trainers ‘found that a kind of rats from Africa were clever and had.a sharp*  sense of smell.  The rats were about 75 cm long and.weighed about l.35 kg, light enough to run across a minefield without setting off the mines.
In January 2004, the APOPO started this project. First, the trainers let the 4-week-old baby rats get familiar with humans. A few weeks later, the rats were no Ionger afraid of people and ‘the things around them. Then they were trained to connect a click* sound with food. After the rats had leamed that, the trainers then taught them to tell the difference between the smell of mines and other smells. When the rats could do it, the click was sounded and they were given a bit of banana.  The method was called clicker training. “The training isn’t easy, said trainer Abdullah Mchomvu.  “You have to be patient. Sometimes I get angry, but then again, I tell myself these are animals.”
After nine months’training, the rats were taken to a minefield. They’ran across the minefield, stopped, sat and scratched the ground to tell the deminers*  that they smelt out’a mine.  Then the mine was cleared. It had  taken two ‘deminers  a day to clear a 200㎡ . minefield, but with the help of two rats ‘they could finish it in two hours.
The rats and the deminers saved thousands of lives, “The rats did this job much better than we expected. So far they have helped to make almost 2,000,000㎡ of land safe. They are heroes,” said Bart Weeqens, the head of the APOPO.
【小题1】 The APOPO trained the rats to search for     .