Question

Texts - 1/8
+12


Activating this element will cause an extra tools region to appear

Carrots for Ranger

by Jennifer Adam

I knew it would be too dark to see anything except fireflies in the pasture, but I was too fizzy with excitement to sleep. So I spent the night tossing and turning and thrashing the bedcovers until the birds sang the sky awake at dawn. Throwing on my clothes and shoving my feet into my boots, I ran outside to check on my new horse.


He was a wild mustang from the mountains of Wyoming, captured by the Bureau of Land Management—the BLM is the government agency that monitors wild horse populations—when his herd management area no longer had enough food or water to sustain all the horses in his herd. I’d found his picture online when he was offered for adoption over the Internet. He was a beautiful bay—his coat like chestnut-colored satin, his mane, tail, and legs glossy black. I fell in love with the white star on his forehead, the arrow-shaped snip of white on his nose, the proud arch of his neck, and the gleam in his eye. I already had one horse—an old gray mare named Ghost, who liked to bite—but I convinced my family I needed another.


“Gentling a wild horse would be an excellent 4-H project,” Mom agreed.


Dad said, “I’ll sign the papers for you, Lacey, but he’s going to be your responsibility, OK?”


I had his name picked out the day we loaded him on the trailer: Ranger, because it made me think of courage and stamina, adventure and exploration. (I should have called him Houdini, or Trouble, or Bucksnort or something instead, as it turned out.)


It was dusk by the time we hauled him home, so I tossed him some hay, showed him where the water tank was, and then left him to settle in. Ghost whinnied a greeting from her own pasture, so I knew Ranger wouldn’t feel too alone. I couldn’t wait to spend a full day with him, to touch him for the first time, to see what he was like and how he might react to things. But as I jogged toward the corral gate early that first morning, confusion and a sick, cold dread seeped into my bones.


Ghost was dozing quietly, but Ranger was nowhere to be seen.


The BLM has strict rules about the necessary facility requirements for keeping a wild horse, so Dad and I had built him a small pen with high, durable rails designed to prevent escape. And yet, somehow, Ranger was missing. His pen was empty.


Had I, in the thrill of bringing him home, forgotten to latch the gate? No, it was still chained shut. Tight and secure.


Panic sank sharp claws into my shoulders and hissed prickly dragon breath down the back of my neck. Ranger was wild, untouched. If he’d managed to get out of his safe corral, how on earth could I catch him again?


A loud whinny broke the stillness of the morning, and hoofbeats thundered behind me. Ranger galloped into view along the edge of the cornfield, hooves kicking puffs of dust and tail streaming behind him like a banner.


“What are you doing out here?” I cried. “How did you escape?”


He tossed his head, almost as if he were laughing at me, and jumped back into the pen with another whinny. Ghost snorted at him and swished her tail.


“Ranger! You just jumped a six-foot fence from a standstill!”


I’d guessed he was athletic, but I’d never seen a horse clear a jump like that with such little effort. He flicked his ears at me, spun on his back legs, and promptly jumped out again. Just to prove he could, I suppose.


___


Adapted from Carrots for Ranger, by Jennifer Adam, ©️️ by Cricket Media, Inc. Reproduced with permission.

Scroll Down

Questions
“I had his name picked out the day we loaded him on the trailer: Ranger, because it made me think of courage and stamina, adventure and exploration. (I should have called him Houdini, or Trouble, or Bucksnort or something instead, as it turned out.)”

What does the author accomplish by using this excerpt in the text?


The author provides the climax of the story as Ranger escaping his stall.


The author builds the action of the story by loading Ranger on the trailer.


The author sets the mood of the story as uneasy since it appears Ranger will escape.


The author conveys the resolution of the story as Ranger being captured and returned.

Answer 1

The author sets the mood as uneasy — the parenthetical ("Houdini... as it turned out") foreshadows Ranger's escape and creates a sense that something will go wrong.