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 5 paragraphs 5.0 worthey

Answer 1

The day our class went to the petting zoo, I thought I knew everything about making friends. After all, I had Jasper — a bouncy, brown dog with ears like soft pancakes and a tail that sounded like a drum when he wagged. Jasper and I were a team. He slept at the foot of my bed, chased leaves with me in the yard, and knew exactly when I needed a cuddle.

At the petting zoo, though, I learned something new. Right next to the goat pen, a small white duck and a gray goat were napping side by side under a maple tree. They had their heads tucked close together, like two old cousins sharing a blanket. My friend Lila whispered, “They’re different, but they’re friends.”

That stuck with me on the way home. Ms. Rivera, our teacher, said scientists study animal friendships. Dr. Marc Bekoff watches dogs, wolves, and coyotes, she told us, and he says friends often sleep close, greet each other, travel together, share food, groom one another, and play. Dr. Frans de Waal studies primates and says friendship is about liking, loyalty, and a common purpose. I thought of Jasper and the duck, and something in my chest felt warm. I wanted Jasper to have a friend like that.

So when Mom came home from work and said quietly, “There’s a small rabbit at the rescue center who needs a home,” my heart did a little flip. A rabbit was not a dog. Rabbits had long ears and soft noses and hopped in a way that made their whole bodies twitch. But Jasper had a wagging tail, a loud bark, and a habit of forgetting he was big. I worried. What would happen when they met?

We named the rabbit Blossom. She had a tiny pink nose and eyes that blinked like buttons. Mom set up a quiet corner with a soft blanket and a box for Blossom to hide in. Jasper sniffed the new smells from the doorway and lifted one brow. “Be gentle,” I told him, remembering how our teacher said friends greet one another. We let them meet slowly.

At first, Blossom sat very still in her box while Jasper approached with short, careful steps. He lowered his head, tongue poking out just a bit, and sniffed the cardboard edge. Blossom’s whiskers twitched. Then, like a handshake, Jasper gently touched Blossom’s nose with his wet snout. Blossom blinked and gave a tiny hop — not away, but closer. I thought of Dr. Bekoff’s study about how animals greet each other and how greetings are the beginning of something important.

For the next few days we watched them with the patience of detectives. When Blossom hopped out to nibble hay, Jasper lay down a few feet away and watched. Sometimes he stood and wagged, but he never lunged. When Blossom thumped her back feet — a rabbit way of saying “I’m worried” — Jasper would sit up, ears forward, as if he were listening to her heartbeat. I told Jasper, “See? She’s a little scared. Help her feel safe.” He rested his chin on the blanket beside Blossom and let out a soft sigh.

They showed tiny signs of friendship that made me think of the things Dr. de Waal had said: liking, loyalty, and common purpose. Blossom liked to explore the backyard in the soft afternoon light; Jasper liked to chase shadows, but he started waiting by the gate until Blossom had finished nibbling the clover. Their common purpose became clear: they would watch over each other in the yard. If a crow landed too close, they’d both freeze and stare until it flew away. Once a thunderstorm rolled in and I heard Blossom thump in the dark, Jasper woke, nosed the blanket, and curled up over her little box like a guard. That night Blossom slept closer to Jasper than she did to me.

Play helped, too. At first, their play looked funny — Blossom hopping in circles around Jasper’s big paws while he tried to gently mouth at a long blade of grass she had found. But as Dr. Bekoff had said, play can tie animals together. Jasper learned how to hold back his excitement so Blossom wouldn’t get frightened. Blossom learned that Jasper’s zooming around was just his way of saying “Let’s have fun.” When they chased a fallen leaf together, their movements matched, like two dancers learning a new step.

There were hard moments. Once Jasper grabbed a toy that Blossom had been chewing on. I clapped and said, “No, Jasper!” He dropped it and looked contrite. We sat them down and gave each of them their own snack — a small carrot for Blossom and a crunchy dog-safe biscuit for Jasper — and then offered both a tiny piece at the same time while they sat side by side. They ate quietly, sometimes sharing a glance, and at the end, Blossom cleaned Jasper’s ear with a quick tongue-lick. To me, that was grooming — just like Dr. Bekoff and Dr. de Waal had described — a way of caring that said, We belong together.

Weeks passed. People at school walked over to see the rabbit who had become Jasper’s friend. They’d laugh when they saw Blossom nudge Jasper’s nose with her nose, or when Jasper lay down and Blossom hopped onto his hip like a passenger on a soft, furry boat. Ms. Rivera wrote a little note to the rescue, telling them about the strange friends and how well they were doing.

One evening, as the sun melted gold into the sky, Jasper and Blossom curled up on the porch mat—Jasper’s big head resting on Blossom’s blanket, Blossom tucked against his shoulder. They didn’t look alike, and they didn’t act the same, but they were close. I remembered the goat and the duck under the maple tree, and the words from our science lesson: friends greet, play, groom, and sometimes even share food. I thought about Dr. de Waal’s idea of friendship being about liking, loyalty, and a common purpose. That’s exactly what Jasper and Blossom had—liking each other’s company, staying loyal when the thunder came, and agreeing that the backyard was theirs to patrol together.

Now when visitors come to our house, they always stop by the porch. “How did you get them to be friends?” they ask. I smile and tell them what I learned on our class trip and in science class: friendships can grow in unexpected places, even between a dog and a rabbit. You introduce them carefully, give them time, and let them play. Mostly, you watch for the little things — the greeting, the shared snack, the way they sleep close — and you know a friendship is growing.

Blossom and Jasper taught me that being different doesn’t keep you apart. Sometimes it’s the differences that make friendship an adventure. And when I fall asleep at night with Jasper’s soft snore and Blossom’s tiny squeaks in the next room, I feel lucky to have learned that lesson from two friends who found each other by a maple tree and stayed friends by choice.