Question

Your class recently visited an animal petting zoo. At one special exhibit, two animals had become good friends even though they were two different types of animals. Your class begins to wonder if this happens with other animals. You decide to do some more research. You have found three sources. Your class decides to make a storybook to share with the animal petting zoo and the people who visit the zoo. You will write a story to add to the storybook.

You have decided to write a story about a boy or girl who already has a pet and is now getting a different type of pet. Write about what happens when the two pets come together for the first time. When writing your story, find ways to use information and details from the sources to improve your story. Make sure you develop your character(s), the setting, and the plot, using details, dialogue, and description.

As you write, think about these questions:

Did you write a narrative about the assigned topic?
Did you use details to describe the characters, places, and events?
Did you organize your narrative clearly with a beginning, middle, and end?
Did you use a variety of words and well-written sentences?
Did you use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation?


Source One
Can We Be Friends?
By Ellen R. Braaf
What Is a Friend?

Biologist Dr. Marc Bekoff at the University of Colorado studies dogs, wolves, and coyotes. Although human friendships differ from animal friendships, Bekoff believes that many animals do have friends. What are the signs of animal friendship? If they're in the same pack, animal friends may sleep close to one another. They greet one another, travel together, share food, and groom each other. Animal friends are nice to one another. They even play together. This friendly behavior can be important to an animal's survival.

Playing together, for instance, helps forge important social bonds* that keep an animal within the safety of the group. “Coyote pups who don’t play much are less tightly bonded to other members of their group and are more likely to strike out on their own,” says Bekoff. Leaving the protection of the group is dangerous. In his seven-year study of coyotes in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, Bekoff found that 60 percent of the youngsters who left the group failed to survive.

For more than 35 years, Dr. Frans de Waal at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has studied primates—animals such as apes and monkeys. He, too, believes friendship plays a role in understanding how these animals interact.

How does de Waal define friendship? “Friendship involves liking, loyalty, and common purpose,” he says. “I know two female chimpanzees who 30 years ago were already close friends. They lived in a zoo group in the Netherlands with more than 25 chimpanzees. Last year I visited and noticed that they were still friends, still grooming each other, helping each other in fights, and so on. Loyalty!”

Why do animals have friends? “Mainly because in the long run they benefit from friendships,” de Waal says. “It is all give and take. Sometimes

Answer 1

When Sam opened his birthday box, he felt his heart flip like a kite in the wind. Inside, tucked in soft paper, were long ears and shiny eyes—Luna, a small gray rabbit with a white stripe on her nose.

“Hi, Luna,” Sam whispered, cupping her warm face. “I hope Max will like you.”

Max, the family’s golden retriever, padded into the room with his tail wagging a banner of fur. He’d been Sam’s best friend for years—always first under the covers in the morning, always ready for a walk. Max sniffed the box, then the air around Luna, and gave a polite little bark.

Sam remembered something from the class trip to the petting zoo. At one exhibit, a goat and a pig had bumped noses and wandered off together. Back at the library later, Sam had read a short article about animal friendships by Dr. Marc Bekoff and Dr. Frans de Waal. The scientists wrote that animals show they’re friends by sleeping close, greeting one another, traveling together, sharing food, grooming, and playing. Sam decided to be patient and gentle—not rush anything.

“Okay, Max,” Sam said, kneeling between his two pets. He put one hand on Max’s head and held Luna in the other, letting the rabbit’s whiskers twitch against his palm. “We’ll take it slow.”

First introductions were quiet. Sam set Luna in a soft blanket on the floor and kept Max on a leash. He sat cross-legged, the way his teacher had said to be—calm and steady. Max sniffed Luna’s ears like a careful librarian checking a book. Luna hunched, then relaxed when she felt Max’s warm breath. They both froze for a moment, eyes bright and curious.

“Good boys,” Sam breathed. He reached for treats he’d chosen ahead of time: crunchy apple slices for Max and a safe bit of lettuce for Luna. He placed the treats a little apart and encouraged both pets to take them at the same time.

They ate together.

Sam’s chest warmed. Sharing food—tiny and slow—was one of the friendship signs he’d read about. He imagined Dr. Bekoff watching coyotes in Wyoming, noticing how pups who played together stayed safer. Maybe Sam and Luna could make bonds that kept them feeling safe and happy, too.

Over the next few days, Sam followed the scientists’ ideas without saying their names out loud. He let Luna hop into the backyard while Max explored on his leash. When Luna hopped forward, Max watched, tail wagging like a slow metronome. The dog would take one step, then wait. Luna would hop a few more inches and then pause, nose in the grass. Sometimes, when a squirrel dashed by, Max looked to Luna as if to check she was okay. She blinked, and he turned back to the squirrel. It felt like a conversation without words.

Play helped, just like the article said. Sam tied a ribbon to a stick and dragged it across the grass. Max chased and Luna bounded after the fluttering ribbon, not fast but brave. Soon they were both weaving around Sam, noses and paws and soft rabbit feet moving together. Play was building a bridge between them—quiet at first, then wider and stronger.

Grooming surprised Sam the most. One rainy afternoon, they snuggled on the living-room rug. Max flopped down with a sigh, and Luna hopped up beside him. Max leaned over and gave Luna a gentle lick behind the ear. Luna closed her eyes and thumped her foot softly—the rabbit way of being content. Sam smiled until his cheeks hurt. He remembered Dr. de Waal’s words about loyalty: friendships can last a long time when animals care for one another.

There were small worries, too. Once, Max got too excited and lunged after a toy Luna liked to nibble on. Luna scampered into the laundry basket and hid, her heart thumping fast. Sam’s voice rose. “No, Max! Easy!” He separated them for an hour and then tried again, slower. He learned to read both animals’ faces—Max’s eager grin and Luna’s twitching nose—and to step in when either looked scared. Friendship, Sam realized, wasn’t only play and snacks. It was listening.

As weeks passed, the signs became clearer. On chilly evenings, Luna curled up on a blanket and Max stretched out next to her, their bodies almost touching. They walked together through the garden as if following the same map. When thunder rattled the house, Max put a paw gently over Luna’s blanket as if to say, “I’ll watch the noise.” Luna, who had once trembled at Max’s bark, began to nuzzle his chin.

“Look,” Sam told his mom one night, pointing at the pair asleep in a tangle of fur and furrier hush. “They’re friends.”

His mom smiled and stroked Luna’s back. “You did a good job,” she said. “You gave them time and treats and, most important, kindness.”

At school, Sam wrote a story about Max and Luna for the class storybook project. He used the article he’d read as inspiration and included the ways their friendship grew—greeting, playing, sharing small treats, grooming, and keeping each other safe. In his story he named the scientists because their words had helped him understand what to look for.

When the class took the storybook to the petting zoo to share with visitors, Sam stood in front of the exhibit where the goat and the pig still wandered together. He turned the pages of his own book and read aloud: “Friendship can be quiet. It can be a shared carrot or a gentle lick. It can be staying close when the thunder comes. Sometimes friends are different kinds of animals, and sometimes they are very different people, too. But friends learn to say, ‘I’ll stay with you.’”

After the reading, a little girl asked, “Do animals really feel loyal?”

Sam looked at Max and Luna sleeping in the picture he’d taken—Max’s head on Luna’s soft back—and then at the goat and pig in the yard. “I think they do,” he said. “They show it by how they care for each other.”

That night, Max nosed Sam awake at midnight. He sat up and peered into Luna’s little hutch by the bed. Luna was awake, whiskers quivering. Max lay back down and nudged Sam’s hand with his nose. Sam stroked him and grinned. Outside, the moon was high and the house was quiet. Max’s breath, even and slow, mingled with Luna’s tiny rustles of sleep.

Sam thought about Dr. Bekoff watching coyotes and Dr. de Waal watching chimpanzees—how animals form bonds that help them feel safe. He pressed his face against Max’s fur and whispered into the dark, “Thanks for being my friend, Max. And hers, too.”

Max closed his eyes, and Luna thumped her foot once in the hush as if to say, “Me too.”