National Geographic Kids Chapters: Horse Escape Artist: And More True Stories of Animals Behaving Badly (NGK Chapters)
Ashlee Brown Blewett
Language: English
Pages: 112
ISBN: 1426317670
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Some animals have a mind of their own. This is certainly the case for Mariska the horse escape artist, Milkshake the charging cow, and Pony the runaway goat! When these animals put their mind to something, they can’ t be stopped—especially when they are causing mischief. In Horse Escape Artist!, you’ ll find out how these determined animals caused chaos in three hilarious stories.
Perfect for kids aging out of early readers, National Geographic Kids Chapters are written in simple prose appropriate to kids just reading on their own.
turtles don’t live on land. They spend nearly their entire lives in the ocean. That’s why they’re called marine reptiles. One hundred million years ago, dinosaurs ruled the land. At that time, many types of marine reptiles lived in the oceans. Giant, long-necked plesiosaurs (sounds like PLEEZ-ee-oh-soars) and sharp-toothed ichthyosaurs (sounds like ICK-thee-oh-soars) swam the seas. Earth’s first sea turtles swam with them. Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Marine reptiles went extinct
expert Dr. Cindy McCall. Horses learn through trial and error. Dr. McCall thinks Mariska probably first opened her stall door by accident. She was playing with the latch, and it flipped open. “But that doesn’t mean horses aren’t smart,” Dr. McCall says. Horses have good memories. Once Mariska learned to open her door, doing it again was a breeze. But Mariska had other plans. She shifted her attention to her inside stall door. Instead of leading outside into the paddock, this door led into the
away. She had learned better than to get too close to Milkshake. Lisa walked back to her bedroom and glanced out the window. Oh no. Thirty thousand dairy cows live at Fair Oaks Farms in Indiana, U.S.A. But the cows there don’t just produce milk. They help run the farm. How? With their poop! Farmworkers collect about 5 million pounds (2.2 million kg) of manure from the Fair Oaks barns every day. Then they run the poop through special machines. The machines turn the poop into clean energy and
likely escaped from a nearby farm. The buck, or male goat, was all black with a long beard. The doe, or female goat, was white with a rusty-red face and a big round belly. A yellow tag dangled from each of the goats’ ears. Farmers use this kind of tag to keep track of their animals. But no one claimed the goats. Did You Know? Nearly three million goats live in the United States today. Now the goats were bandits. Outlaws. And they had decided to make the woods behind the Chase Ridge Apartments
to an open gate behind the house. Then he hopped out of the truck and flung open the back. The goats rose to their feet and leaped onto the grass. They sprinted past a woman and three children, who were standing on the lawn in their pajamas. Then they disappeared into a cluster of trees at the far side of the yard. Tom and Susan Tillander and their three children had moved into the pale yellow house a few months earlier. Before the move, they had lived in a crowded city suburb. The houses there