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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Dillard see as the difference between a parasite and a predator?
(a) the predator is more honest
(b) it's easier to pick out the predator
(c) nothing they're both bad
(d) at least one has a fighting chance when up against a predator

2. What did a Russian botanist discover about locusts?
(a) locusts are merely grasshoppers under stress
(b) locusts breed in the water
(c) locusts will eat other insects
(d) locusts have too many babies

3. What would Dillard suggest for food instead of creature eating creature?
(a) everyone being vegetarians
(b) bread and water
(c) no one needing food at all
(d) manna

4. Fecundity could be defined as:
(a) always hungry
(b) a type of fat
(c) prolific in offspring
(d) wasteful of resources

5. What does Dillard say is the driving force after reproduction in the animal kingdom?
(a) protecting the young
(b) having a nice place to live
(c) finding food
(d) knowing God

6. When moving towards a muskrat, how does one keep from scaring it?
(a) lay down and crawl on your belly
(b) sit still and hold your breath
(c) move when the muskrat's head is turned away from your direction
(d) walk in the water

7. Eskimos believe it is a great honor to be incarnated as what?
(a) a human
(b) a tiger
(c) a blue whale
(d) a polar bear

8. How would Dillard like to see death?
(a) as a mean part of creation
(b) as something to embrace
(c) as another journey
(d) as benign

9. What principle has lead many physicists to mysticism?
(a) the answer to question #128
(b) the answer to question 67
(c) the answer to question 44
(d) the theory of relativity

10. After the butterflies finally leave, how does the sky seem to the author?
(a) like normal
(b) barren of color
(c) big and never ending
(d) empty

11. When Dillard scrapes the outer coating from a monarch's wing, what is left?
(a) nothing, the wings are too fragile to scrape
(b) a pale pink membrane
(c) the wings are the same color the whole way through
(d) a thin, translucent membrane, crisscrossed with black lines

12. What serves as a catalyst to ready the birds for migration?
(a) the fall air
(b) catepillers making cocoons
(c) lack of flowers in the landscape
(d) the leaves turning colors

13. For wild animals, Dillards sees enduring parasitic invasions as what?
(a) a way for animals to die
(b) the cost of life
(c) as a blessing
(d) something deadly

14. How long does the migration of monarchs continue?
(a) a week
(b) a month
(c) five days
(d) most of the fall

15. Dillard is sometimes allowed one brief glimpse of a creature. What does she call these glimpses?
(a) pure good luck
(b) an act of fate
(c) a gift of abundance
(d) her destiny

Short Answer Questions

1. Silvery eels swim to the sea after eight years of maturing in obscure creeks and rivers. What happens to them at the sea?

2. Why would Dillard say some trees are like body builders?

3. When Dillard comes upon a rooting acorn, she imagines what?

4. What does Dillard find out about muskrats and humans?

5. The development of science leads to what, according to the author?

(see the answer keys)

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