PBS高端访谈:真会玩儿! 美国人给鸡织毛衣助保暖!

 　　With the late winter storm bearing down on Massachusetts, one group of plucky¹ individuals in Milton, Massachusetts, got together to help out their neighbors across the road.

　　From PBS station WGBH, Cristina Quinn has the story.

　　What happens when the chicken across the road is cold? You ask your neighbors to knit him a sweater,

　　which is exactly what Erica Max, program director of the Wakefield Estate, did, when she noticed that Prince Peep, a Malaysian Serama rooster, started shivering when the temperature dropped.

　　I discovered that Serama roosters, you know, normally would live very close to the equator, and they are not well suited to this climate in New England.

　　So Max called up Nancy Kearns, who lives at Fuller Village, a retirement² community across the street, and asked her if she and her knitting group could help Prince Peep.

　　I said, let's give it a try. So I went online. There's a very wonderful site called Pinterest. And I just typed in the words "chicken sweater," and I found a pattern from England.

　　These ladies do a lot of knitting for charities like Project Linus, a nationwide organization that donates homemade blankets to sick children,

　　so knitting for chickens was a departure for them, and it came with a lot of trial and error.

　　Because the pattern really was for big chickens. And Prince Peep, in particular, is a miniature.

　　Weighing in at roughly one pound, he's certainly diminutive³. But what didn't fit Prince Peep looked tailor-made for the larger hens.

　　And it worked out perfectly⁴, since many of them were molting⁵, making them more vulnerable to the elements.

　　Oh, well, you look marvelous, darling.

　　On this particular day, Erica Max couldn't find Prince Peep's sweater. It's so tiny that it's easy to misplace.

　　So we found another easygoing chicken to try one on.

　　Ok, so we have chicken and we have a sweater. We're going to attempt to put a sweater on a chicken. We are going to attempt.

　　And this beautiful hen is not used to having sweaters put on her. But this is her first time, so we can give her a little credit for being nervous. But it's certainly a fetching sweater.

　　It's lovely. Yes, that's a very good-looking sweater. That really suits you. Chicken, this really suits you.

　　For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Cristina Quinn in Milton, Massachusetts.

　　You have to love it. I wonder what those chickens did before they had sweaters knitted for them. We will find out. undefined

1 plucky   

adj.勇敢的

参考例句：

• The plucky schoolgirl amazed doctors by hanging on to life for nearly two months.这名勇敢的女生坚持不放弃生命近两个月的精神令医生感到震惊。
• This story featured a plucky heroine.这个故事描述了一个勇敢的女英雄。

2 retirement   

n.退休，退职

参考例句：

• She wanted to enjoy her retirement without being beset by financial worries.她想享受退休生活而不必为金钱担忧。
• I have to put everything away for my retirement.我必须把一切都积蓄起来以便退休后用。

3 diminutive   

adj.小巧可爱的，小的

参考例句：

• Despite its diminutive size,the car is quite comfortable.尽管这辆车很小，但相当舒服。
• She has diminutive hands for an adult.作为一个成年人，她的手显得非常小。

4 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

5 molting   

n.蜕皮v.换羽，脱毛( molt的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The old cuticle is digested by molting fluid. 旧表皮被蜕皮液消化。 来自辞典例句
• Molting in insects is triggered by rising levels of a hormone called ecdysone. 昆虫的脱皮是由于称为脱皮素激素的含量升高而引起的。 来自辞典例句