What I noticed first about my new parrot, Chico, was that he couldn’t fly. His wings had been cut short and he was stuck on the   1  just like us humans. When the weather turned nice, I took Chico outside. I sat him on a branch of a tree, hoping to make him   2 . At first he seemed   3 . He walked back and forth on the branch looking anxious or nervous. He didn’t even flap his wings in an attempt to fly. Somehow he knew he was   4 .
One day Chico got especially excited . He paced back and forth and made an incredible amount of   5 . Then all of a sudden he stopped and let out an even louder scream. He started   6  flapping his wings for the first time ever － then he lifted off the   7  like a space shuttle! I was amazed and   8  . Little did I know his feathers had been growing back, and Chico had been   9  until the moment was ripe for escape!
Two days later Chico   10  . First I tried to trick him back with food, but he would not come near me. Then I took his   11  and put it away—still he would not come. Finally, I made him a firm promise that I would let him   12  every day the weather was nice if he did come back.   13  , he flew onto my shoulder.
From that day on, whenever the weather was good I would let him out early and he would fly around and be back before dark. The   14  lasted for two months before suddenly Chico became   15 . The vet said that he had been infected with a disease from the pigeons in the neighborhood. Within a few days he died.
I was very sad. The   16  crossed my mind that if I had not set him free to fly, he would be still alive. But what   17  is there in being a bird if you can’t fly?
Chico made his first break for   18  on a late Monday afternoon in April. When will you make yours? You too can take a   19  when the conditions are right, knowing you too, in your own way, were built to fly. If you don’t    20 , what will be the purpose of your life?

请认真阅读下面短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入最恰当的单词。（每空一词）

Robot revolution

The day that a robot wakes you up, cleans your room and walks your dog might still be a few decades off. But increasingly, engineers are saying that robots are going to make the leap from the factory floor to your family room.

Companies like Sony and General Electric are working on designs for small robots. Products like the Roomba, a robot that can clean floors, are flying off the shelves. On the cover of a recent issue of Scientific American magazine, Bill Gates predicted the “Dawn of the Age of Robots”.

What’s behind this new era (时代)? It’s partly a matter of technology. Devices that can recognize and respond to a human voice have been developed. There are now a few different ways for robots to move around. They can walk, crawl or ride on wheels. They are being made smaller and smaller. They are also becoming more and more energy efficient.

A bigger part of the story is on the demand side. From the day Robert Adler invented the television remote control in the 1950s, people around the world have tirelessly searched for ways to get lazier.

Also take into consideration the increasing wealth of rich people, the time appears ripe to introduce robots to ease our daily lives.

To be sure, robots those walk on two legs and talk like people are still too complex for our present engineering abilities. Today’s robot revolution is to make them for everyday use. Robots will do basic housework such as cleaning or gardening, or just help you have more fun on the basketball court.

What makes a robot different from an ordinary cleaning machine is not the presence of computer chips (芯片). Nowadays even your microwave has a computer chip. It is the ability to sense and make changes to the environment in real time.

For example, a floor-cleaning robot should be able to sense your scared cat and move out of the way. Today’s computing ability is, for the first time, able to make machines that could “think”, at least in certain limited ways.      

Love in a Box