M:Hi, Claire. How does it feel to be back on campus?
W:Gee, hi, well, to tell you the truth, I have mixed feelings.
M:Oh, why?
W: I had this great summer job that I really hated to leave. I worked at the wild life research center in Maryland.
M:(1) ________________________. What did you do?Clean the cages?
W:This is a wildlife center, not a zoo. This place breeds endangered species and tries to prepare them for life in the wild.
M: You mean the endangered species like the tiger and the panda?
W:Well, endangered species, yes. But not tigers or pandas. I worked with whooping cranes and sandhill cranes. (2) ______________________________.
M:I can see it was hard to leave that job.But how did you teach a bird how to eat and drink?
W:We covered ourselves up with cloth and used puppets made out of stuffed cranes to show the baby chicks what to do. Then the chicks copied what the puppets did.
M:Cloth? Puppets? Sounds like fun!
W:It was. The cloth and puppets are the key tools. We all covered ourselves up, the scientists, the vets, the junior staff, everybody. You see, baby cranes will become attached to their caretakers.
M:So if the caretaker is a person, the crane will stay in places where people are.
W:Yeah. (3) _________________________.But by covering ourselves and using cloth and puppets the chicks are more likely to seek out other birds rather than people.
M:It is really exciting.