Read the next two selections. Then choose the best answer to each question.
Best friends Chip and Luther are exploring the Old Place, an abandoned farm in their town.
(1) Beyond the bramble-filled pasture was ten acres of woods. Once Chip and Luther had tried to explore back there, but they hadn't gone more than a dozen yards when they hit a swampy area and sank up to their knees in mud. Then, while trying to get their feet out of the mud without losing their sneakers, they'd seen a coral snake. Luther had wanted to look at it up close, but Chip knew it was poison by the order of the colored bands. He'd taught Luther this verse on the spot: "Red by black, don't worry, Jack. Red by yellow, kill a fellow."
(2) After that Chip and Luther referred to the woods as "the Jungle" and never went back. Instead, they checked out other things on the Old Place, like rabbit burrows in the thorn patch, the orange tree where a mockingbird always built her nest, and the barn owls that nested in the barn loft.
(3) There were two good ways to count rabbits. Either you could climb the rickety ladder up into the loft and spot them from above, or you could lie in the grass in what had been the old cow pen and wait for the rabbits to come out into the open. The original Miz Rabbit wasn't afraid of the boys, and maybe she told her babies that these humans wouldn't hurt them. The young ones were wilder than Miz Rabbit, but if Chip and Luther put out a few handfuls of grain and waited, they would come nibble at it.
(4) The only trouble with trying to count rabbits, either from the ground or the loft, was that there were so many and they looked so much alike. All were either white like Miz Rabbit or brown like their swamp rabbit papa. Since they hopped all over the place, after a while you'd get mixed up, not sure which ones you had counted and which ones you hadn't.
(5) Chip and Luther first climbed up into the loft to check out the view. This part of South Florida was about as flat as land could get. Looking through holes where boards had fallen off the walls, they could see the fields all around, as far as the Wilson place in one direction and, in the other direction, as far as Chip's house and the highway. What they didn't see on this particular afternoon was a lot of rabbits. A few dozen at most. Normally they'd see way more than that on a nice day like this.
(6) After about fifteen minutes in the loft, Luther started sneezing from all the dust. "Let's get out of here," he said. "If we put out grain, more will come."
(7) They climbed back down the ladder and went into the old cow pen. Luther dug into his pocket for the goat feed he'd brought along for just this purpose. After making a line of feed on the ground, the two boys sprawled on the grass and waited. Within a few minutes rabbits started hopping up. Soon there were about thirty-five, in all sizes, nibbling at the grain.
(8) "Not as many as usual," Luther commented.
(9) "More will come" Chip said. More always did if they waited long enough.
From THE LAST WILD PLACE by Rosa Jordan, Peachtree Publishing Company, Inc. © 2008.