One cold winter night, a fox woke up from his sleep. Feeling very   41  , he looked out of his foxhole to see what the weather was like. It had stopped   42   but now everything outside was white and frozen, and very   43   indeed.

He reached the   44   and was happy to find that only   45   of the lake was frozen. So he sat at the edge of the frozen part and lapped up(畅饮)the water.

When he was ready to leave, he had a   46   . His lovely red tail was frozen and stuck to the ice! He could have   47   really hard and he would have been   48   . But he didn’t want to lose the beautiful white hairs at the   49   of his tail. He loved his tail very much.

“I’ll wait for a while,” thought the fox. “Maybe the ice will thaw(解冻)soon and then my tail will be free again.” he was not   50   at all. The men were still asleep and he was safe before   51  .

The fox sat on the ice   52  . Soon the sky started to get lighter. He looked at his tail but now the whole tail was   53   to the ice! The poor fox was frightened now.   54   it was dawn, the men would come to the lake and they liked to   55   foxes.

Some people were coming towards the lake! He was terrified but he couldn’t   56  . A wolf ran past at that time and the fox called out to him for   57  . The wolf looked at the fox’s tail. He knew how to   58   the poor fox. He went up to the fox and bit off his tail   59  .

The hesitating fox had lost his whole beautiful red tail just   60   he had not wanted to lose a few white hairs on the tip.