首页
登录
职称英语
That summer an army of crickets started a war with my father. They picked a fi
That summer an army of crickets started a war with my father. They picked a fi
游客
2023-12-15
52
管理
问题
That summer an army of crickets started a war with my father. They picked a fight the minute they invaded our cellar. Dad didn’t care for bugs much more than Mamma, but he could tolerate a few spiders and assorted creepy crawlers living in the basement. Every farm house had them. A part of rustic living, and something you needed to put up with if you wanted the simple life.
He told Mamma: Now that were living out here, you can’t be jerking your head and swallowing your gum over what’s plain natural, Ellen. But she was a city girl through and through and had no ears when it came to defending vermin. She said a cricket was just a noisy cockroach, just a dumb horny bug that wouldn’t shut up. She said in the city there were blocks of buildings overrun with cockroaches with no way for people to get rid of them. No sir, no way could she sleep with all that chirping going on; then to prove her point she wouldn’t go to bed. She drank coffee and smoked my father’s cigarettes and she paced between the couch and the TV. Next morning she threatened to pack up and leave, so Dad drove to the hardware store and hurried back. He squirted poison from a jug with a spray nozzle. He sprayed the basement and all around the foundation of the house. When he was finished he told us that was the end of it.
But what he should have said was: This is the beginning, the beginning of our war, the beginning of our destruction. I often think back to that summer and try to imagine him delivering a speech with words like that, because for the next fourteen days mamma kept finding dead crickets in the clean laundry. Shed shake out a towel or a sheet and a dead black cricket would roll across the linoleum. Sometimes the cat would corner one, and swat it around like he was playing hockey, then carry it away in his mouth. Dad said swallowing a few dead crickets wouldn’t hurt as long as the cat didn’t eat too many. Each time Mamma complained he told her it was only natural that we’d be finding a couple of dead ones for a while.
Soon live crickets started showing up in the kitchen and bathroom. Mamma freaked because she thought they were the dead crickets come back to haunt, but Dad said these was definitely a new batch, probably coming up on the pipes. He fetched his jug of poison and sprayed beneath the sink and behind the toilet and all along the baseboard until the whole house smelled of poison, and then he sprayed the cellar again, and then he went outside and sprayed all around the foundation leaving a foot-wide moat of poison.
For a couple of weeks we went back to finding dead crickets in the laundry. Dad told us to keep a sharp look out, He suggested that we’d all be better off to hide as many as we could from mamma. I fed a few dozen to the cat who I didn’t like because he scratched and bit for no reason. I hoped the poison might kill him so we could get a puppy. A couple of weeks later, when both live and dead crickets kept turning up, he emptied the cellar of junk. Then he burned a lot of bundled newspapers and magazines which he said the crickets had turned ’into nests.
He stood over that fire with a rake in one hand and a garden hose in the other. He wouldn’t leave it even when Mamma sent me out to fetch him for supper. He wouldn’t leave the fire, and she wouldn’t put supper on the table. Both my brothers were crying. Finally she went out and got him herself. And while we ate, the wind lifted some embers onto the wood pile. The only gasoline was in the lawn mowers fuel tank but that was enough to create an explosion big enough to reach the house. Once the roof caught, there wasn’t much anyone could do. [br] The immediate cause of the fire is
选项
A、the wind.
B、some embers.
C、the explosion of the fuel tank.
D、the materials of the roof.
答案
C
解析
细节题。由题干中的fire定位至末段。最后三句解释了着火的过程:我们吃饭时,风将一些灰烬吹到木头堆上,只有剪草机的油箱里有汽油,但油箱一爆炸,大火就烧到了房子,一旦屋顶着了火,人们就无能为力了。可见,房子着火的直接原因是油箱爆炸,故[C]为答案。[A]和[B]是间接原因,[D]未提及。
转载请注明原文地址:http://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3276566.html
相关试题推荐
ChrisGardner’sunlikelyroadtorichesstartedintheparkinglotofSanFran
ChrisGardner’sunlikelyroadtorichesstartedintheparkinglotofSanFran
Summeriswindingdown,butit’sstillnottoolatetoputthetopdownandhi
Summeriswindingdown,butit’sstillnottoolatetoputthetopdownandhi
Summeriswindingdown,butit’sstillnottoolatetoputthetopdownandhi
Summeriswindingdown,butit’sstillnottoolatetoputthetopdownandhi
Shestartedinthebathroom.Sheputtheshavingbrush,thedisposablerazor,
ResearcherswhopickedupandanalyzedwildchimpdroppingssaidonThursdayt
ResearcherswhopickedupandanalyzedwildchimpdroppingssaidonThursdayt
ResearcherswhopickedupandanalyzedwildchimpdroppingssaidonThursdayt
随机试题
•ForQuestions1-8youwillheareightshortrecordings.•Foreachquest
WeekendWorkshops&Presentations!Enjoytheseseminarsbysomeofthebestin
StudentexpeditionsdoagreatdealofgoodworkontheArcticislandsbutf
某城市道路工程进行招标。A单位中标后与发包方签订了施工合同准备施工。首先由项目经
可使用()服务管理远程主机。A.BBS B.Telnet C.E-mail
共用题干 第二篇Thenextbigbreakthroughinar
Itwascourteousofhimtohelptheold
社区评估中问卷调查的注意事项正确的是A.一个问题可以多问几件事,以调查更多的结果
患者男,32岁。胸部撞伤后30分钟,自觉右胸疼痛。查体:脉搏80次/分,血压12
(2020年真题)下列各项中,应计入营业外收入的有( )A.转销无法支付的应付
最新回复
(
0
)