One day a few years ago we had a guest of the uninvited variety. In fact, this uninvited guest was a
bird- a(n)   1   , to be more precise(精确地).
     "What's that?" I asked when I first heard the thump(重击声). "It sounds like Joe is outside playing
basketball," my wife, Anita, said. She paused and   2   more devotedly. "It's coming from the   3   ." she
said. "Maybe it's one of the little   4   ".
     We rushed out the door. Jonathan, our youngest, was easy to make   5   . "If he's making holes in the
wall again…" I said as I searched there. No children at all. But there was that    6    again, coming from
right up there.
    And that's when I   7    the sparrow. It was flying    8   just inches below the ceiling. It was clearly
trying to   9   , but couldn't see that the way out wasn't up, but down and out through the open   10   .
So the bird continued beating its wings and hitting its head against the   11   .
    "Poor thing," Anita said. "It must be   12   ."
    "Well, maybe it's because of me," I said as I moved toward it. I tried to show the bird how to glide
(滑翔) down a few feet so it could get outside,    13   that only seemed to frighten it more.
    "Why don't we just    14   ?" Anita suggested. "I'm sure he'll    15    eventually."
    So we went back into the house, where we continued to hear the ongoing struggle. Then suddenly, it
was    16   . We looked into the garage, and our uninvited guest was   17   .
    "See?" Anita said. "I told you he would make it."
    "Yeah," I said. "But how many knocks on the head did it   18   him?"
     I've thought about that little sparrow through the years. Just like that sparrow, we often meet
situations we don't know how to   19   . Born to go upward, we don't    20   consider the possibility that
something good might happen if we stop flapping(拍打) around and just glide down a little bit.